Breach of copyright on Google

[cm1975]

Morning all,

I'm looking for a bit of help and advice.

The company I work for has the company name and one of it's subsidiaries names registered as Trademarks for advertising etc. However, there's a pleb on Google that is heading their Sponsored Link with our name.

For example if we were Coca-Cola it would be something like this -

Coca-Cola
We make great drinks too
www.fizzydrinks.co_uk

Google are of course dragging their heals and taking forever.

I've done a WHO-IS on the domain name and it comes back with a person's name -


Registrant type:
UK Individual

Registrant's address:
Nothing
Nothing
Nothing
NO28 5NO
GB

Registrar:
Fasthosts Internet Ltd [Tag = FASTHOSTS]
URL: http://www.fasthosts.co.uk

Relevant dates:
Registered on: 06-Jun-2007
Renewal date: 06-Jun-2009
Last updated: 21-Aug-2007

Registration status:
Registered until renewal date.

Name servers:
ns1.screenspin.net
ns2.screenspin.net

WHOIS lookup made at 10:08:37 31-Oct-2007


Any ideas on what we can do, or action to take?

Cheers,

CM

 

[ScottJ]

Google have done this for me before, they generally do deal with it once you submit a 'notice of infringment' and prove it.
http://www.google.com/dmca.html

They know it can cost them money if they don't act

 

[fred]

Other things you can do are contact Nominet to report the incorrect contact details (breech of T's&C's) and, could be more satisfying, give us all details of what to search and which ad it is so we can all click on it a few times to cost them money

 

[cm1975]

Other things you can do are contact Nominet to report the incorrect contact details (breech of T's&C's) and, could be more satisfying, give us all details of what to search and which ad it is so we can all click on it a few times to cost them money

I did suggest that everyone in our company takes the morning off and just clicks on the ad, but it was rejected!

Cheers for the heads up on the Nominet thing. After doing a reverse IP lookup, I found a dot com of theirs with no contact details, so I've filed a report with ICANN too!!! :-D

Unfortunately, I can't tell you what the ad and the domains are, as I hope I can pick them up if they do get binned. Neither of them are particularly great (The .co.uk is hyphenated twice), but it'll just to annoy them even more!!

 

[cm1975]

Google have done this for me before, they generally do deal with it once you submit a 'notice of infringment' and prove it.
http://www.google.com/dmca.html

They know it can cost them money if they don't act

I believe a notice of infringement has already been submitted. Any idea of how long they take on these matters?

 

[paymatters]

My understanding is that google can show what ads it likes on any page i.e. they can sell banners on their pages if they like. The fact that it's the page where someone has searched for your trade marked term is irrelevant).

(Don't take this as legal advice!).

 

[cm1975]

(Don't take this as legal advice!).

I won't!

 

[paymatters]

I think though if they use the trade marked term in the ad then that's another matter.

ALso believe law is different in US to UK?