You look for floral company Fleurop on Google and out comes rival Topbloemen. For many years this was perfectly possible: Topbloemen set up their Google ads in such a way that they would come out on top of the search results in Google.
Now the court in The Hague has decided that it is not permissible to use the name of your competitor. At Fleurop they are of course happy about the decision. Fleurop CEO Jeroen de Zwart: "Not only did Topbloemen drive up the price of AdWord ads, and cost us orders, but according to the court it also causes confusion."
Search results
Topbloemen doesn’t specify anywhere whether it does or does not belong to the network of Fleurop florists, which is not the case. De Zwart: "The consumer types ‘Fleurop’ in Google and expects to get 'Fleurop' in the search results. Third parties are not permitted to piggyback on our name. It confuses the consumers’ search."
The manner in which the competition has been using AdWords has resulted in taking advantage of the notoriety of Fleurop’s brand name. De Zwart: "We can protect the Fleurop name everywhere. However, on the internet our valuable brand had been unprotected to date. The judge has now given Fleurop a bit of protection back. This is an important judgment because Google is the world's largest and most used search engine."
Relieved
De Zwart is very relieved and pleased with the court ruling against Topbloemen: "This is a major and groundbreaking step into the world of AdWords and legal protection of a brand."