• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, April 1, 2005

Search engine marketing firm Oneupweb will take to market Monday a service designed to allow companies to track whether their trade names are being used by rivals as part of a search marketing strategy. The service, which Suttons Bay, Mich.-based Oneupweb is calling a "trademark infringement monitoring tool," will test search engines to see if clients' trade names are being used as triggers for sponsored ads by rivals. Oneupweb's new tool also looks to see if clients' trademarks are used in the text of the ad copy itself.

For now, the service will test clients' names--or whatever other terms the clients request--every three hours by entering the name into the Google and Yahoo! query boxes and seeing what pops up as a sponsored listing. Oneupweb will report back to the client if a rival shows up as a sponsored ad--or if a paid listing includes the client's name in the ad copy--and will provide the client with a screenshot of that page.

Oneupweb has had a beta version of service for the last month, during which time about a dozen clients have used it, said Lisa Wehr, company president. In that time, said Wehr, one client's trade name was used by competitors on approximately 30 occasions.

It's still unclear legally whether using a rival's name to trigger an ad violates trademark law. Last December, federal district court judge Leonie Brinkema ruled after a trial that Google had not violated Geico's trademark by allowing other insurance companies to bid to appear as sponsored listings when consumers queried on the term "Geico." But she didn't endorse the practice; rather, she held that Geico hadn't adequately proved that consumers were confused by competitors' ads.

She also ruled that ads that mentioned the Geico name in their copy did violate the insurance giant's trademark, but hasn't yet determined whether Google is liable for such infringement. Earlier this week, another federal district judge held that a trademark infringement suit brought by American Blind & Wallpaper Factory could go forward to trial.

Oneupweb's Wehr said that, even without a definitive court ruling, her company's clients had been able to dissuade competitors from using trademarked names. "Typically, what we found from our own experience is that if you're able to collect the evidence that this is occuring, you can contact the person or company . . . and send them a screen shot and a cease and desist letter."