The importance of protecting our brand on the Web

At the end of March, two articles appeared in the Journal du Net and in 01Net which brought up the question of brand protection on the Internet. 

The first article tells us how Google and the travel site Faraway24.com were fined 75 ' 000 Euros for false and misleading advertising. This fine resulted in a complaint from the hotel group Citadines, in the motive that the pages of results related to the query “Citadines " posted sponsored links towards competitors’ websites, of which included Faraway24. The Tribunal de grande instance de Paris thus forced Google to remove the word Citadines from their Adwords platform.

The second article shows the numbers published by the world organization of intellectual property (OMPI), according to which the number of complaints for excessive unauthorized use of domain names would have increased by 18 % in 2007.  According to the OMPI, this increase would mainly be due to the new rules concerning the protection of the personal information. since webmaster data isn’t appearing when querying the Whois database, since some people are abusively using domain names while remaining hidden from their "victims". 

It seems that company policies consists more “of introducing disputes when they deem them necessary, rather than to lead defensive domain name campaigns”. It’s a surprising choice, seeing as systematic monitoring and repatriation of strategic domain names is much more effective (and much cheaper!) than going to the courts.

Wether it be “positionsquatting " or domain names management, IC-Agency proposes profitable and effective solutions to protect your brand within search engines and reduce traffic diversion. Do not hesitate to contact us to know more about it, or read our case study concerning Nespresso’s protection concerning illegal sponsored links.