The legal regime of keyword-triggered ads will definitely be decided at the European level, and not by national courts of EU Member States.
After the French Court of Cassation (on May 20, 2008), the German Supreme Court referred an AdWords case to the ECJ, and asked the following question: "Does the use of a third party's trade mark as a keyword/Adword on identical goods/services constitute trade mark infringement under the Directive?" (thanks IPKat). The wording of the question is very similar to the one asked by its French counterpart.
The German court has also denied trademark infringement in two other cases.
On the (very) heterogeneous decisions throughout Europe, see the summary Frédéric Glaize and I wrote (in French).
1 comment:
There are currently four series of questions passed to the ECJ on sponsored links and use od third parties trade marks.
One major difference between the questions of the FR supreme court and those of its three counterparts from AT DE & NL, is that in the French case deals with Google's responsibility whereas in other countries it is the advertiser's responsibility which is at stake.
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