Talk about unintended consequences. When Victor Andrew Wilson decided to ask an English court for damages, claiming two subsidiaries of the search engine Yahoo! Inc. had infringed “Mr. Spicy,” the trademark of his small mobile catering business, he likely never imagined that the loss of his own case would bolster Google Inc., the dominant player in online search advertising.
Yet, within weeks of the ruling on the Mr. Spicy case last February, Google announced changes in its ad policy in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Effective May 5, Google started allowing businesses in those countries to use rivals’ trademarks as keywords to trigger an ad, or sponsored link, alongside search results.
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