Google Adwords: How to Protect Trademarks

One of the problems that Google Adwords advertisers frequently encounter is seeing that the competition is using their brand terms as keywords to display their ads.

Can I protect my brand on Google?

Google Adwords can only protect terms and brands that are duly registered in the country where they are applied, so the first step is to properly register your brand with the competent authority in your country if you have not already done so.

How does Adwords protect my trademark?

The level of protection varies from country to country, so depending on where you are you can protect your brand from appearing in text ads or protect your brand both in text ads so that it cannot be used as a keyword by the competition .

What type of complaints can I file?

There are two types of complaints, specific and general.

Specific Complaint: The Google Adwords team will investigate the infringement only on specific ads, the brand owner must provide the exact URLs that are committing the infringement, and advertisers other than those listed will not be investigated.

General Complaint: When a general complaint is filed, all advertisers who may be committing trademark infringements will be investigated, however if there are advertisers authorized to use the trademark terms, their account IDs must be provided to prevent their ads from being disapproved.

All very nice, but I already want to report #$ * @ %! you are using my brand!

To make the corresponding complaint, you just have to access the following form: Trademark Authorization Form and provide all the requested data.

And have you already had a problem of this type with your competition? 😉