(Izdevnieciba Baltija Publishing, 2017) Mykhaylyuk, Halyna; Kharytonova, O.; Kharytonov, E.
As the virtual world increasingly intersects with real life, companies
across the EU might be interested in a clearer regulation of keyword
advertising. A great number of well-known firms in the UK, France,
Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and Belgium are faced with the problem
of the sale of keywords, which correspond or are identical to famous
trade marks, by Internet service providers (ISPs) to third parties. One
of the main reasons behind this trend is the public’s growing preference
for online shopping, either for products or services. As an Internet user
conducts a search based on certain words/phrases, ISPs then produce
a list of sites, which best matches those keywords in decreasing order
of relevance. As a result, in order to attract more clients, owners of
specific websites started buying keywords from the most popular ISPs.
This situation led to the point where trade mark proprietors complained
about the infringement of their trade mark’s rights.