[asterisk-biz] Digium enforcing its trademarks

[Eric Chamberlain]

Kevin,

You have it backwards.

In the US, Google will let you buy any AdWords you like, but your ad copy
can't contain registered trademarks, if the trademark holder has told Google
to block them.

And to the best of my knowledge, in the EU, the trademark holder can block
the trademark from both the AdWords and the ad copy.

The situation differs in different locations, based on court cases between
trademark holders and Google.

We've used this in the past, to prevent competitors from using things like
Voxilla in their ad copy header.  But Google still makes money from our
competitors buying the Voxilla AdWord.

--
Eric Chamberlain

-----Original Message-----
From: asterisk-biz-bounces at lists.digium.com
[mailto:asterisk-biz-bounces at lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Kevin P. Fleming
Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2008 3:44 PM
To: Commercial and Business-Oriented Asterisk Discussion
Subject: Re: [asterisk-biz] Digium enforcing its trademarks

Brian West wrote:

> You shouldn't have to contact Digium for such use cases as "Asterisk  
> Compatible" or "Works with Asterisk".

The issue is *not* the use of the trademarks within the ad copy itself
(as you rightly point out), it is the purchase of search
results/listings for those trademarks via the AdWords process. As far as
I'm aware, it's perfectly acceptable to have an ad that says "Our
products are compatible with Asterisk" or "Our products are based on
Asterisk" or similar copy, but purchasing 'Asterisk' or 'Digium' as a
keyword to get those ads to show up in searches is not allowed unless
Digium has authorized you to do so.

-- 
Kevin P. Fleming
Director of Software Technologies
Digium, Inc. - "The Genuine Asterisk Experience" (TM)

_______________________________________________
--Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com--

asterisk-biz mailing list
To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit:
   http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-biz