Brand owners have a simple and practical tool to prevent misuse of their trademarks in keyword advertising. As Norton Rose reminds, brand owners can exclude their trademarks from being purchased by their competitors as a Google keyword by using Google’s ‘AdWords trademark complaint’ process.

The process allows for 2 types of complaints:

1. a complaint against all users (which removes the trade mark from use by any one not specifically authorised); and
2. a complaint against a specific user.

To opt a brand out of the Adwords system, a trade mark owners enters its Google customer identification together with its trade mark registration details into the online form, then selects the required option to exclude the trade mark from use as a keyword.