ECJ rulings on Google keywords might not resolve controversy, warns High Court | OUT-LAW.COM

• ECJ rulings on Google keywords might not resolve controversy, warns High Court | OUT-LAW.COM

  tags: keywords, trade marks
  

  • A widely-requested European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruling on keyword advertising may fail to give businesses in the UK and Ireland the legal clarity it would give to the rest of Europe, a High Court judge has warned.

     

    Mr Justice Arnold last week referred two cases to the ECJ, the European Union's highest court, so that it could decide whether or not the use of a trade mark as a trigger for someone else's advertising is trade mark infringement.

    But he said that even if the ECJ was to rule on the issue, which is not certain, it could still leave British businesses in the dark because Google's UK and Ireland trade mark policy is different to that in the rest of the EU.