People like me? What exactly does that mean?
Lawyers and the people who hire lawyers to try to take advantage of the small print, without respecting what a law was meant to mean in the first place.
I understand it may matter to you as this is the area you work in, and if this ruling goes in Interflora's favour you may not be able to do something you are currently doing?
What you want is a lousy law. Unless you can single out PPC for special treatment, you're going to have to cover all forms of internet advertising.
The problem is, you - and whatever judge would rule in your favour - have so little understanding of internet marketing that whatever you'll decide will have side-effects you can't imagine.
It'll be a lousy judgement that bleeds all over the place and will affect both freedom of speech and the right of online publishers to sell advertising.
That's why I oppose it.
A clean law would have been that Google isn't allowed to sell these terms - that would stop the law being broken in the first place and everyone would know where they stand. But companies tried that and lost.
Please don't misrepresent me Steve, It's 'unbecoming' in your words.
I challenged you to come up with a wording, you ran away from that challenge. All I'm doing is suggesting why.
This is a moral argument. I think people should have their efforts rewarded, and I don't think people should be allowed to ride on their coat-tails.
Except for Google, of course. You don't think they should be rewarded for returning search results for trademarked terms.
The point of spending money on registering a trademark is that it provides the owner with the exclusive right to use it in the course of trade in relation to relevant goods/services.
Here's the question: how do you define "using it"? It's so vague.
The registration of a trademark is supposed to protect the time and money people spend establishing goodwill in the name of their business/product.
"Protect" from what?
And you really want a simple guide as to what is and is not acceptable?
No, I want you to draw a line in the sand - one that treats all websites and all advertising the same - the way I did with:
"Publishers have the right to sell advertisments. Advertisers have the right to buy that ad space and run ads as long as the content of those ads is legal."
Right now all I hear from the Interflora people is that people searching on that word only want Interflora and their associates (which isn't true). And, from you, some technicalities about someone typing a trademarked term into a password-protected interface.
I still don't hear why this one website should be allowed to sell advertising to its visitors, but people shouldn't be allowed to buy that advertising.
Don't you look at your argument and think "What the hell? Am I really arguing that no-one can buy something that I agree can be sold?".
That's what I mean by small print. The whole thing depends on something utterly illogical. It's like Major Major in "Catch 22": you could only go into his office to see him when he wasn't in his office.
Steve
