Many great articles have been published on the topic of keyword advertising during the last couple of months, three of which are especially recommended for the readers of this blog:
- Bednarz, Keyword Advertising Before The French Supreme Court and Beyond – Calm At Least After Turbulent Times for Google and Its Advertising Clients, IIC 2011, 641.
Bednarz in detail analyses recent French decisions in the light of the ECJ’s Google France decision and reaches the conclusion that, although the French courts were well-known for not missing a chance to find Google or its advertisers guilty on whatever legal matter (trademark law, law of unfair competition, tort law) was presented to them, this apparently has changed.
Kulk (Delft University of Technology; University of Amsterdam - Institute for Information Law) reaches across the Atlantic and not only provides a splendid and short introduction into the topic, but also compares in detail the principles which the courts on both sides of the atlantic are following. While jurists from the US show little sympathy for the almost Prussian fixation of the ECJ on the requirements of trademark use, jurists from the Old World shake their heads in disbelief over the only legal concept that appears to be even more vague than the ECJ’s concept of the trademark function: the initial interest confusion.
- Bozbel, Benutzung der Marke als Domain-Name, Metatag and Keyword im Türkischen Recht, MarkenR 2011, 145.
While the US and European legal systems mainly left it to their courts to deal with the topic of keyword advertising, Turkey has opted for the Utha appraoch, explicitly forbidding the booking of a third party trademark as a keyword (149). Bozbel in his article however does not only cover the topic of keyword advertising, but provides a short and concise introduction into Turkish trademark law and its views regarding, domain names, Meta Tags (*sigh*) and keyword advertising.
For further articles published in which the author had a chance to participate or which he wrote – mainly 
– on his own, please check the publications tab.
The INTERFLORA case is based on a (seriously lengthy) reference containing 10 questions by the England and Whales high Court (EWHC) dated to May 2009. In the light of the ECJ’s Google France decisions in March 2009 the EWHC upon request by ECJ later reduced the number of questions in its reference down to 5 in mid-2010. AG Jääskinen published his opinion in early March 2011 and the final decision by the ECJ swiftly followed six month later.
