Re: Not sure if I'm flattered or offended
In the United States at least, one acquires trademark rights through
usage. While registering a trademark with the Patent and Trademark
Office provides additional rights and protections (and perhaps
damages in the event of infringement), it isn't necessary to register
a mark to have trademark rights.
A trademark or service mark is something associated with a product or
service. I don't think that one's personal name inherently holds
trademark rights. Certainly (heaven forbid) there could be more Rob
Frankel's or Cliff Kurtzman's in the world, and it wouldn't be a
trademark violation for someone to name their child thusly. However,
this particular ad was doing a bait and switch not just on any Cliff
Kurtzman, but in particular on THE Cliff Kurtzman that was speaking
at AD:TECH San Francisco, so the usage was tied to me specifically
and the products and services I provide. So it seems to me that I
would in fact have a pretty reasonable case for trademark
infringement in this context, and other torts likely apply as well if
one wanted to be litigious rather than amused.
The bait-and-switch adwords ad seems to be gone today. But if you
look at the organic search results on Google for "Cliff Kurtzman"
there is also a link mid-way down the page to
marketingprinciples.com. This was a page someone deliberately
constructed around my name in order to try to siphon traffic from
people looking for me. It says "Coming soon... everything I have
learned from Cliff Kurtzman." Certainly the twinkies running this
site have not learned anything from me, because I would never condone
using this kind of a deceptive tactic to acquire traffic. I think
they have a very large number of similar pages on their site built
around people in the online marketing industry, in order to try to
lure people looking for solutions or services. It is also a bait and
switch, but done with organic traffic instead of PPC traffic.
--Cliff
Clifford R. Kurtzman
CEO | Moderator
ADASTRO Incorporated | The Online Advertising Discussion List
http://www.adastro.com | http://www.o-a.com
(281) 480-6300
Received on Wed May 03 2006 - 14:00:28 CDT
