May 5, 2008 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- A US court has ordered a company to use 'negative keywords' to alleviate any confusion between the trademarks of two separate companies, making it one of many innovative measures ordered by the judge.
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The trademark dispute involves Orion Residential Finance's use of the word 'Orion' in relation to financial services and products. Orion Bancorp placed a lawsuit against ORF, arguing that it had used the term and held the trademark since 2002.
ORF offered some similar services as Orion, particularly in regards to housing finance. The US District Court for the Middle District of Florida ordered ORF to cease "from any and all use of the term Orion, Orion Residential Finance, or any other confusingly similar term".
The judge then took it one step further, ordering ORF from "purchasing or using any form of advertising including keywords or 'adwords' in internet advertising containing any mark incorporating Plaintiff?s Mark, or any confusingly similar mark, and shall, when purchasing internet advertising using keywords, adwords or the like, require the activation of the term 'Orion' as negative keywords or negative adwords in any internet advertising purchased or used".
In the court's ruling for ORF to use negative keywords, or adwords, ORF must configure its keyword advertising system settings to never display their advertisements when 'Orion' is searched for on search engines such as Google and Yahoo.
Orion Bancorp first took ORF to the World Intellectual Property Organization's dispute resolution service over the domain name orionresidentialfinance.com, but then changed it from a specific domain name case to a general trademark case.
The ruling resulted in a default judgment, since ORF did not put forth an opposing case, despite it being represented by a lawyer in the actual hearing.
The judge added that ORF "is and has been actively engaged in the business of offering to the consuming public financial and real estate related services utilizing the term ORION or various iterations thereof, including use in interstate commerce, on various signs, advertising, slogans, promotional material, a top level domain name at www.orionresidentialfinance.com and other matters containing the term "Orion", all without Plaintiff's authorization or consent".
