However, to only look at the protected brand names misses the real story – consumers often misspell brand names (i.e. “brittish airways”) or type them in to search engines using other keyword combinations (such as “ba flights” or “british airways flights to new york”). We found that in the UK a much larger proportion of consumers are pulled away to competitor or price comparison sites in these cases. Part of the reason is that the search engines offer some protection for the trademark protected name but not for misspellings. And competitors can broadmatch on terms like “flights” pushing the brand’s results lower down the SERP (potentially). This indicates that if competitors were able to bid on the protected brand name, searches would be lured to competitors more often.

Advertisers often liken this to buying ads in the yellow pages. American Airlines could not buy an ad under Delta Airlines’ brand.

A string of developments has coalesced in my mind today to underscore the unstable nature of intellectual property law on the Internet, where old rules don’t seem to apply but nobody really knows what the new rules are. The first…