Namesafe Sues Rival
A recent lawsuit raised some issues about the legal issues of pay per click advertising and trademark names. NameSafe, an identity theft protection company, sued LifeLock for bidding on their name even though it is trademarked in pay per click advertising.
The Federal suitwas launched in the Middle District of Tennessee and alleges that Lifelock attempted to steal the trademark and divert traffic from NAMESAFE.com In a press release by the company founder and 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.”
According to Stephen Shankland of CNET LifeLock denied the allegations.
“Following notice of a pending lawsuit from WSMV in Nashville, TN on Thursday, we immediately began an investigation and determined that LifeLock Corporation has never purchased any competitive branded search terms. To be clear, LifeLock Corporation has never used the ‘NameSafe’ name in LifeLock ad copy.”
Identity Theft Labs revealed in an article on Namesafe that until recently bidding on competitor trademark names was widespread throughout the identity protection trade.
Should an identity theft protection company be allowed to bid on another companies keyword names? That is a question our legal system has yet to solve.
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