US Court Orders Company to Use Negative Keywords 177
A US court has ordered a firm to utilize negative adwords in their internet advertising. "Orion Bancorp took Orion Residential Finance (ORF) to court in Florida over ORF's use of the word 'Orion' in relation to financial services and products, arguing that it had used the term since 2002 and had held a trade mark for it since then. [...] The judge in the case went further, though, restraining 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.'"
Orion, that's definitely a unique name.... (Score:4, Interesting)
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I don't think
Re:Orion, that's definitely a unique name.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Orion, that's definitely a unique name.... (Score:5, Funny)
Who remembers (2:erocS)? (Score:5, Informative)
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Aye Matey, forget Orion, call yourself Booties (Score:4, Funny)
Pirate Booties Bankcorp
You can hire Maddox to be your spokesperson.
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Slashdot doesn't enfore latin-1 because it has to but rather because it wants to. As to why I have no idea.
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I once asked the lords of slashdot about this. The answer was that the use of non-ascii characters is severely restricted for fear that people would deface the site by using characters such as the direction codes. It seems to me that this is overly restrictive and that the software could just filter the small set of characters likely to cause trouble, but they seem to feel that it is better to be more cautious.
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Re:Orion, that's definitely a unique name.... (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootes
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Editors please Edit! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Editors please Edit! (Score:5, Funny)
It's fine, we're all very adept lawyers here.
what? (Score:3, Funny)
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Re:Editors please Edit! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Editors please Edit! (Score:5, Funny)
"you know dude, you been naughty. like stop it, k"
will that do ya?
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For the last generation but one, it would be: 0r10n !pwned by you. ur !1337 like me, s0 stop.
Re:Editors please Edit! (Score:5, Informative)
The judge in the case went further, though, restraining
IF
restraining ORF from 'purchasing or using any form of advertising including keywords ||
('adwords' in internet advertising containing any mark incorporating Plaintiff's Mark &&
hall, when purchasing internet advertising using keywords, adwords or the like, require the activation of the term 'Orion' as negative keywords) ||
negative adwords in any internet advertising purchased or used.
END
I may need to debug that...
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I need a woman, NOW.
Re:Editors please Edit! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Editors please Edit! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Editors please Edit! (Score:4, Funny)
Many words OK.
Re:Editors please Edit! (Score:5, Funny)
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In short: Deal with it.
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Re:Editors please Edit! (Score:5, Funny)
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The correct defense of this particular sentence is that it is written in legalese. I'm anything but a lawyer, but even I understand the need for judicial orders to be written in a very specific style designed to minimize any possible confusion of meaning. The result is not always particularly clear as English.
Re:Editors please Edit! (Score:5, Funny)
As soon as you hit the period, you get your wish. Usually corrupted in a horribly unforeseen way.
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Orion Bankcorp: Crybabies (Score:5, Insightful)
And then with the courts stepping in and forcing ORF to not use the term in their advertising is playing favorites to OB. I can only imagine that this decision puts a serious dent in ORF's bottom line. If ORF was calling themselves "Kleenex" or some other brand name, that would be understandable, but "Orion?" Come on. OB shouldn't be crying foul when they should've known there would be confusion with the name "Orion." They need to grow up and play ball the old fashion way: may the best man win.
Re:Orion Bankcorp: Crybabies (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Orion Bankcorp: Crybabies (Score:5, Insightful)
Nolo Press has a good book about trademarks, and one of the examples they give of a common word turning into a protectable trademark is "Diesel: a bookstore". "Diesel" is a pretty common word but uncommon when applies to bookstores.
Thanks. (Score:2)
Thank you for the link. I just finished reading the prologue, and I like! I like! Now, if only I didn't have to work, so I could catch up on the year and a half of archives.
Never heard of those Orions... (Score:2)
These banks prolly ought not mess with movie folks over things like trademarks and copyrights...
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Except that Orion Pictures doesn't sell financial services. ORF does, which is why the complaint carried weight. The two companies have overlapping areas of business interest. It's not just the use of a trademarked term, it's use of it in such a way that it could cause confusion for potential customers and cost the plaintiff money.
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Different domain, different trademark.
Heh... that summary says there are over 200 different trademarks for the term Linux.
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If pressed to think of a non-constellation use of Orion, I think of Orion Pictures
Those are two different industries and hence one wouldn't be confusing Orion Bankcorp with Orion Pictures. So that situation isn't really analogous to two financial companies both using Orion in their name.
These banks prolly ought not mess with movie folks over things like trademarks and copyrights...
Even if Orion Pictures was still around, which it's not, they wouldn't be able to win a suit against either Orion Bankcorp or Orion Residential Finance.
You might want to do some reading on trademark law before you post next time.
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The funniest bit of commentary from Weird Al's UHF is at the very beginning, where he sings along with the Orion logo music, "Orion...Orion...is bankrupt now!"
Re:Orion Bankcorp: Crybabies (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Orion Bankcorp: Crybabies (Score:5, Informative)
Nobody is likely to ask a friend for "Kleenex," hoping to get a specific brand of tissue, but it is common to ask for "a kleenex," just as somebody might ask for "a bandaid."
People in various places also refer to "a frigidaire" or "a coke," and plenty of terms that started out as trademarks have been lost to common words: aspirin, cellophane, dumpster, escalator, nylon, linoleum, thermos, velcro, zipper.
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It's gotten to the point that using the correct term does little more than make you look (and feel) like a pedantic jerk.
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Bad precedent (Score:3, Insightful)
And don't even get me started on AA Locksmiths, AAA Locksmiths, and AAAA Locksmiths...
Re:Bad precedent (Score:5, Insightful)
I doubt this sets any precedent. This is not new or novel or even unexpected. The only news for nerds here is the judge explicitly calling out search advertising. Otherwise, it's entirely predictable (the way laws and courts should be).
The Orions had both overlapping goods/services AND they had overlapping sales regions.
Golden Dragon restaurant in downtown L.A. does not compete with Golden Dragon in Manhattan. There is no confusion arising from the re-use of that name. Now, if there were a Golden Dragon *chain* restaurant, the rules may change. But not much. First come, first serve, as far as that trade mark and the area it is used in. You can't form a chain called "Golden Dragon restaurants" and try to push that Manhattan restaurant out (but you can try to buy it).
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Re:Bad precedent (Score:4, Insightful)
Hence, Golden Dragon in Decatur IL has no standing to sue Golden Dragon in Kissimee FL for trademark infringement.
Once case recently illustrating this was Trump's trademark of "You're Fired" in classes 9 and 16 (I believe; not sure if there were other classes also) nationwide; there was a pottery shop of the same name in Chicago that sold goods in classes 9 and 16 prior to Trump's trademark application. They ended up settling for an undisclosed amount, but basically the pottery shop owner already had the trademark (though unregistered) in Chicago, so Trump was out of luck.
To get back to the Golden Dragon example, someone trying to register "Golden Dragon" nationwide (say, if they were starting a chain) would need to negotiate with restaurants of that name in order to supplant their existing trademark.
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OB and ORF shouldn't be surprised when someone steps on their toes once in awhile. OB acts like it invented the term despite the fact that it's been around for thousands of years.
The trademark is obviously restricted to banking and finance. It's not like they'd get the same judgment against "Orion Tiddlywink Company'. They don't have to invent the name; that is a rather modern contrivance in which companies change their name to make up a vaguely positive sounding fake name, like a cancer merchant changi
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Here it looks like they showed up in the penalty phase, but by that point they'd already 'conceded' all the main points -- like that Orion is protectable, and that using it in keyword advertising is a trademark infringement. Both of these are points of law, that the
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Its perfectly reasonable (Score:5, Informative)
Having made that finding the court is quite reasonably penalizing ORF. It is quite reasonable for an injunction to penalize ORF after they clearly took advantage of Orion's reputation.
And any company that does not show up in court when served with papers is likely to find that they end up saddled with onerous terms in any case.
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That said, the idea of negative adwords is a bad idea. If there is a valid trademark dispute, ORF should be forced to pay restitution to Orion or forced to change the name. But. now due to the negative keywords ruling, even if ORF changes its name to Uranus corporation, they still are bound not to advertise on a page where user search
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I thought that was more or less the definition of punishment. You can't do X now becuase in the past you did something wrong. Not trying to be a smart a$$ but appearntly someone (teh court) thinks they did something wrong and need to be punished.
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I thought Uranus is the trademark of Goatse corporation. It is not?
Re:Its perfectly reasonable (Score:4, Insightful)
If the one company has the term trademarked, then yes, the other must tread lightly when using the term. As to using the negative in the ad terms, that is just insanely stupid. This will only serve to provide LESS comparisons of competition, instead of doing what the law was designed to do: clear up any confusion in the marketplace.
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I think not.
This is a case where two financial institutions have extremely similar names and overlapping business territory, and the more established one is suing the newer one to prevent them from using the name. It is a textbook application of trademark law, and it doesn't matter at all if the term is a registered trademark as long as the plaintiff can show that they began using the name in the marketplace first.
If the secon
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Because, as I understand it, they have permission from Coke to do so. Which makes a lot of sense when you consider that the very act of saying "Pepsi is better than Coke" or vice versa is a way of reinforcing their duopoly where those are the only two options.
On the other hand, notice how most advertisements will say that their product is 10% better than "the other leading brand".
And when they
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Your understanding is wrong. It's perfectly legal for Pepsi to say "we're better than Coke". No permission from Coke is needed. It would be condsider fair use.
There's a reason for this. It's called marketing bullshit. If you say "we are 10% better than XYZ" someone can do their own tests to show that you are ly
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Re:Its perfectly reasonable (Score:4, Interesting)
Recently I happened to release an album on iTunes music store. It takes 28 days to get put up there. Unfortunately another band with the same name released their album the day after mine, though they couldn't have known in advance of the name clash. Both albums are in the same genre. However, after a couple of e-mails back and forth we resolved the thing amicably by deciding that both bands would continue to use the same name, even though technically I could have forced them to change their name as I was there one day earlier.
Legal doesn't necessarily mean reasonable
Being right doesn't necessarily mean reasonable
Sometimes people need to take a step back and realise that.
Misinterpreting negative (Score:5, Funny)
My interpretations: (Score:5, Funny)
or
2) Company must now register keywords that, when combined with their intended keywords, nullify each other out, like Semantic anti-matter.
or
3) Company may only use keywords that have a value less than zero.
Re:My interpretations: (Score:4, Funny)
1. Get sued for trademark infringement
2. Get court to force you to buy negative keywords (which value is less than zero)
3. Profits!
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I smell a Loop hole (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I smell a Loop hole (Score:5, Informative)
the judge specifically said "internet advertising". and s/he used the phrase "keywords, adwords, or the like". to suggest that the ruling applies only to google adwords is flagrant trolling. i don't know how anyone could possibly interpret the statement in the ruling as being constrained to google.
sheesh. how this got modded "interesting" is beyond me.
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Yahoo does NOT use "negative Keywords" they use "Excluded Keywords". That may be a legal back door used in the appeal process.
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Techpawn's argument (the way I understand it) is that lawyers could have a field day with this one since the judgment specifically said "negative" in their two examples.
They could put ads with Yahoo!, get sued again and say in court "Your honor, Yahoo! does not offer negative keywords, negative adwords or the like."
Em
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They could put ads with Yahoo!, get sued again and say in court "Your honor, Yahoo! does not offer negative keywords, negative adwords or the like."
That's why the term was clarified in the ruling document to mean any keyword that could be used to prevent an advertiser from appearing during a search. I know this is slashdot and all, but you might want to read the thing you are trying to critique next time. It'll help to make you look like less of a moron the next time you try to expound on a subject.
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That, and you know how lawyers like to twist words and sentences.
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It is still an interesting thought and I would not be surprised to watch an Orion guy try such a move. Then again, we can only pray a trained lawyer would not make the same mistake I did.
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Appeal in 3..2..1.. (Score:2)
Re:Appeal in 3..2..1.. (Score:5, Informative)
There goes my dreams of an Orion Blastar Bankcorp (Score:2)
What next, Onion Bankcorp, because that is how I read the article the first time I read it.
I don't think so (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah well, they should just change their name to "YA Bankrupt Fly-By-Night Mortgage Broker" and be done with it.
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In short, there's no reason Orion couldn't be a protected mark. The court found that it is, and I see no particular reason to think they'd get this wrong. That being the case, telling them they can't advertise under that mark is pretty much normal operation of trademarks.
Requiring negative adwords seems
What about Hershey? (Score:2)
I believe the ice cream company is actually the older of the two. So they should really take their court before this judge. They could be granted to actually force the famous Hershey chocolate to buy negative keywords.
***
The real question in this case, is whether the two companies founded independently or not. (ie: Both founded in separate regions and at
Yes and no (Score:2)
But why should they be barred from using a competitor's name in their advertising? A federal court has found that to be perfectly legal [news.com], so this is an unusal punishment.
Seems unfair (Score:2)
The fools!!! (Score:2)
Comparative Advertising (Score:2, Interesting)
The reason this injunction is so bad is that it explicitly forbids comparative advertising. You know how in the grocery store they shelve the Campbell's soup next to the store's off-brand label? That's similar to buying the trademarks of your competitors as keywords. That way, both products come up in the search results and the consumer gets to investigate both and determine which she would like to buy. That benefits the market by giving consumers more information, exactly the kind of thing that trademar
What means "Negative Keyword"? (Score:2)
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What's really sad (Score:2)
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