Trademark Infringement 101 - How to determine who is bidding on trademarks

Important: When reporting infringement to networks, search engines, hosting services, etc., be sure to provide as much evidence as possible.  Screen shots of the ad, as you saw it displayed on the search engines, of Landing Pages, of Clickstream Investigation results, etc.

When it comes to protecting and defending your trademarks, a fundamental part is identifying just who is bidding on them.  The purpose of this course is to teach you the steps necessary to make this determination.  Each of the “Big Three” Paid Search Engines are similar enough that most of these processes work across all of them.  However, there is a key difference between Google, MSN and Yahoo.

At this time, Google does not encode the Destination URL of AdWords.  Meaning, it is possible for you to ‘extract’ the Destination URL of the ad and conduct an investigation without generating a CPC charge for whomever is paying for the ad.  Yahoo and MSN do encode the Destination URLs of their Paid Search ads.  As a consequence, any Clickstream Investigation techniques WILL create a CPC charge.  As such, we encourage everyone performing such investigations to take care to limit this effect on compliant Affiliates and Internet Marketers.  For this reason, our examples in this course will focus on Google.

Take the example of bidding on ‘ebay’ on Google.  As we can see, there are three Paid Search ads, all indicated by the “Sponsored Link(s)” designation.  For the first step, move your mouse over the ad you want to investigate and click the Right-Mouse-Button.  From the menu that opens, for Firefox, choose “Copy Link Location“, and for Internet Explorer, choose “Copy Shortcut“.

Open a text editor, such as Notepad, WordPad, Microsoft Word, etc, and Paste the Link/Short cut.  Towards the very end, you will find the string q= followed by a URL, an example of which is seen below.

The URL is the destination URL for the AdWord, meaning, if you were to click on the ad, this the URL you will be re-directed to.  If you are familiar with URLs of the ads you make available to affiliates and marketers, then, if you are lucky and they are “Direct Linking”, the URL can be easily recognized.  Simply Copy and Paste this URL into an email to your contact or representative at the appropriate network or channel and they can work to make the infringement end.

If you cannot recognize the URL, the destination URL might be a ‘Landing Page’, meaning a web page developed by the Affiliate or Internet Marketer to promote an advertiser, product or service.  If not a Landing Page, the URL may trigger re-direction, or series of re-directs, before arriving at the actual destination URL.  Later in this course, we will review ‘following-the-click’, or Clickstream Investigations.  Using your mouse, highlight and Copy the URL after q= (do not include the q= as well).

Open a new web browser, or return to one you currently have open, and Paste the URL into the Address Bar, like in the image to the left, and press the Enter key on your keyboard.  In this example, you can see that the Destination URL (http://trendtrain.com…) does not lead to re-direction, but a Landing Page.  If there is an ad on the Landing Page, Right Click on it, Copy the Link Location (or Shortcut) and jump to the section on Clickstream Investigations.

In the case of TrendTrain, they are offering a service that is unrelated to eBay’s core business.  There are those, outside of Affiliates and Internet Marketing partners, that will infringe on your trademarks as well.  To determine who owns/operates a particular domain name, visit any web site that offers WHOIS reports, such as Network Solutions.  Domain name registration services do make the option of securing the owners identity and contact information available to registrants.  But, WHOIS will allow you to learn who the domain name registration and hosting services are, and contacting them can help to enforce your trademark rights.

Clickstream Investigations:

There are several different methods to log the re-direction that occurs from click-to-ultimate destination URL; going through network logs, using software to display re-direction, web based tools, etc.  Probably the two easiest methods are the software and web-based tools.

Using a program, such as HTTPWatch, you can Record (or log) all network activity.  Simply click on an ad on a Landing Page, or Copy and Paste an extracted AdWord Destination URL into the Address Bar of your browser.  It is important to note, again, that Clickstream Investigations on MSN and Yahoo ads will generate CPC fees for whomever ads it is you are effectively clicking on.  In the example to the left, we have clicked on an eBay ad and, by reviewing the log you can identify re-direction going through ad networks or tracking servers/services.  In this case, we have highlighted the re-direction occurring through eBay’s tracking system for their Partner Network, ‘Rover’.  Depending on which Affiliate or Advertising Network is being used, you should be able to identify those responsible, or the networks/channels utilized, in a similar fashion.

Web based tools, such as Rex Swain’s HTTP Viewer, are also able to log and follow network activity, just like software tools.  Simply Copy and Paste the Destination URL into the URL box and click on the Submit button to initiate the process.  It should be noted that experts at re-direction and misdirection schemes are aware of many web based tools, including Rex Swain, and have taken additional steps to cover-up their activity.  Although web based tools are powerful, we prefer to use software tools - or accessing raw network activity logs (which is outside the scope of this course) to perform Clickstream Investigations.

In this example, the HTTP Viewer tool is able to follow the re-direction.  Just as with software tools, by reviewing the re-direction, and by being able to recognize the URL structure of your ads, you should be able to identify the affiliate or partner, or, at the very least, the affiliate or ad network being utilized.  Like before, we have highlighted the re-direction passing through eBay’s “Rover” tracking system.

Notifying Networks, Channels, Hosting Services, etc:

When alerting networks, channles and hosting services about trademark infringement, you want to be sure to include as much supporting evidence as possible.  Copy and Paste the URLs at the Search Engines where the ads were seen, take screenshots of the ads, and of the steps you took to determine that someone working with that network or channel is involved.

Hopefully, the information in this course will allow you to be able to determine who is involved in infringing on your trademarks, or, at least, the networks/channels they are using the monitize that infringement.

If you need help defending your online advertising program against Trademark Infringement, please review our Services, or contact us.