Internet-Marketing-Springboard.com

An interesting case arose today concerning the legalities of pay per click advertising and trademark names. NameSafe, an identity theft protection company, sued their competitor LifeLock for using their name even though it is trademarked in search engines.

The Federal lawsuitwas launched in the Middle District of Tennessee and alleges violations of trademark laws and the Tennessee Consumer Protection Act A NameSafe press release in which CEO David Ridings stated

“We have discovered that LifeLock has been sponsoring advertisements on most major search engines including (among others) Google, Yahoo, Lycos, MSN, Dogpile, and AOL, that deceptively led consumers to Lifelock.com. Specifically, when you searched ‘Namesafe.com’ in any major search engine, you found an advertisement that said ‘Namesafe.com’ but when you clicked on it, you were not directed to the official site for NAMESAFE (www.namesafe.com), but rather to our competitor, LifeLock.com. It is one of the most bizarre attempts to steal a company brand and its costumers that I have personally seen. Ironically enough, we consider it a form of ‘corporate identity theft’ from a company that is in the business of protecting identities, and we really could not tolerate it. Having said that, we expect it will stop today.”

In a statement to CNET LifeLock denied the allegations.

“We have contacted our reseller network to remind them of the importance of compliance with LifeLock’s requirements. We have been informed that a non-compliant reseller purchased the term ‘NameSafe.’ The reseller has subsequently been terminated. LifeLock will not tolerate violations of our compliance guidelines from any independent reseller.”

IdentityTheftLabs.com revealed in an article on Name Safe that until recently bidding on the trademarked names of competitors was common in the industry.

Should an identity theft protection company be allowed to bid on their competitors trademarked names? That is a question for others to ponder as I believe the answer is yes.