Lawyers from competing site wants me to stop bidding on keyword

[spartanic]

Just got an email from Clickbank stating that they were notified by lawyers of a competing website to ask me to stop bidding on the broad keyword term "genealogy".

Correct me if I'm wrong but can you even trademark this word? So many books and websites use this word.

This keyword doesn't matter to me anyway since it hasn't converted so I went ahead and paused it.

However I still have long tail variations that include this keyword. Should I pause those too or should I just let them run?

[paulgl]

I don't get it.

What does clickbank have to do with your bidding?
I assume you are using adwords for a clickbank product?

What do lawyers have to do with adword bidding?

How can they possibly ask you to stop bidding?

This would violate google's TOS I am sure. It would go
completely against the adword code of conduct, so to
speak.

I have no idea why clickbank would be a go between for someone
elses lawyer.

Something fishy about stopping you bidding all the way around.

As stated, this would kill the spirit of adwords. They would just
have to outbid you!

Paul

[4morereferrals]

HUH?

Does your webpage/salespage/landing page or clickbank product contain copyright violating content?

Sounds like a load of crap to me. Kindly ask the attorneys in question to call or write you directly - not clickbank. They never do that by the way - they may track you by calling clickbank to get your details - but to pass amessage along thru clickbank? sounds like a competitor trying some underhanded tricks.

Really - your details are missing some serious elements to make any sense.

[Kay King]

Sounds like you are promoting a CB product that has limitations on what terms affiliates can use for PPC.

I don't think the problem is the word - but using the word to promote THAT product. Check the affiliate terms to see if there such a limitation (the product terms, not CB).

kay

[Traffic-Bug]

This doesnt sound right to me. Nobody can prevent you from bidding on generic terms like 'genealogy' especially in a competing adwords setup. You will want to check whether the email is really from clickbank or it has been faked as though it is from clickbank?

[Kay King]

Nobody can prevent you from bidding on generic terms

If you are promoting THEIR product, yes, they can. Usually it's not such generic words but if the product is "geneology" they can say "affiliates may not use (list of words) in titles of PPC advertising." If you affiliate with larger sellers or manufacturers - it's not uncommon.

In that case, it's not "you can't use that word" but "you can't use that to promote my product".

kay

[spartanic]

Well what happened was that the competing site's lawyers contacted the Clickbank vendor who then contacted Clickbank to get to me about the keyword term.

FYI: this competing site is a pretty well known site and is not a small time affiliate site.

I'm direct linking with this campaign so I don't have a landing page as of yet. This is probably the only way they could get to me.

Here's the email:

Hello,

The vendor “xxxxxx” has received a cease and desist order from CompetingSite.com. He states:

“To address, can you please contact an affiliate by the name of "xxxxx" and tell him to cease all bidding on the term "genealogy"? Currently, he's running a PPC campaign on the broad match term "genealogy" and an ad is showing up labeled as CompetingSite.com as a result, which prompted the notice from the lawyers.”

Please take care of this immediately or we will be forced to disable the account. Please confirm.

Tom
ClickBank Security
abuse@clickbank.com
http://clickbank.com

I've checked this affiliate vendors affiliate info page and there's nothing on it about any keyword restrictions. I'm sure they were probably surprised by this as much as I was.

Anyway, I've paused that keyword. Doesn't really matter to me since it hasn't made any conversions and I was considering pausing it eventually. I'll probably get pissed if they did make me pause one of my high converting keywords though.

[spartanic]

Originally Posted by Kay King

If you are promoting THEIR product, yes, they can. Usually it's not such generic words but if the product is "geneology" they can say "affiliates may not use (list of words) in titles of PPC advertising." If you affiliate with larger sellers or manufacturers - it's not uncommon.

In that case, it's not "you can't use that word" but "you can't use that to promote my product".

kay

Yea I know what you mean and I see it alot of it on affiliate networks like Cj.com. However I'm not even promoting that competing site at all. Its just something similar to theirs only its a Clickbank product which doesn't have any keyword restrictions. It totally confuses me why they would do that even though its not even their product.

[Kay King]

If you are not promoting them - it may be a scare tactic.

If there a contact listed (there will be) why not ask what it's based on? Is there a trademark they can reference?


That word is not trademarked - so I'd ask for a specific reference or explanation.

[recommended]

Here is my two cents worth on it; hire your own lawyer to look into it an give you an assessment of what laws you are breaking. This way you will be able to work around it or bust right through their BS (if any). You should be able to hire some legal beagle for about 150 to 300 bucks tops; if not, hire a paralegal instead because they do all the research for the lawyer anyway. Good Luck my Friend

[spartanic]

Originally Posted by Kay King

If you are not promoting them - it may be a scare tactic.

If there a contact listed (there will be) why not ask what it's based on? Is there a trademark they can reference?

That word is not trademarked - so I'd ask for a specific reference or explanation.

To be honest I'm not going to try to fight for this keyword since it doesn't convert but I have contacted the affiliate vendor about this issue so we'll see what the affiliate manager says.

[dburk]

Hi spartanic,

It's not uncommon to see a competitor try to scare or intimidate his competition out of the marketplace. I'm not a lawyer, so I'm not offering legal advice, but under the circumstances you described, I not only wouldn't pull my ads, I would double down on that keyword because there must be something there worth fighting for.

Clients ask their attorneys to do all sorts of crazy things, some lawyers are happy to rack up those billable hours, but so far it's only your competitor paying. Unless there is something you left out, I believe they have absolutely no standing and it would be silly to shrink away from a letter with no merit.

I can tell you that I have seen this same tactic deployed against about two thirds of my clients and we have always laughed them off and never heard another peep. This seems to be a routine scare tactic in widespread use in today's marketplace. Each of us has to make our own call, but don't expect your competitors to play fair.

[Fraggler]

Originally Posted by spartanic

Hello,

The vendor “xxxxxx” has received a cease and desist order from CompetingSite.com. He states:

“To address, can you please contact an affiliate by the name of "xxxxx" and tell him to cease all bidding on the term "genealogy"? Currently, he's running a PPC campaign on the broad match term "genealogy" and an ad is showing up labeled as CompetingSite.com as a result, which prompted the notice from the lawyers.”

I think you have misread the C&D. They are saying that you are representing yourself as CompetingSite.com ("and an ad is showing up labeled as CompetingSite.com as a result" ) and that is the reason they told ClickBank to contact you. If you aren't then let ClickBank know that this bloke is telling porky pies.

You can't run an add pretending to be another company. Clickbank knows that. The competing company knows clickbank knows this...and they knew clickbank would act on it.

[badboy_Nick]

Originally Posted by spartanic

Just got an email from Clickbank stating that they were notified by lawyers of a competing website to ask me to stop bidding on the broad keyword term "genealogy".

Correct me if I'm wrong but can you even trademark this word? So many books and websites use this word.

This keyword doesn't matter to me anyway since it hasn't converted so I went ahead and paused it.

However I still have long tail variations that include this keyword. Should I pause those too or should I just let them run?

If it's trademarked you may be infringing on their copyright by displaying it in your ad text. However, you can still BID on the keyword itself. Google does allow this!

However,Genealogy doesnt seem like it CAN be copyrighted as its so generic? I'd check with your lawyer just to be sure.

[Mike Adams]

Yea, you have to look at it this way. What grants them the right to bid on it but not you?

[paulgl]

This still makes no sense. We are missing something.

Your ad in adwords would not show up as competingsite.com
unless you plugged that in. Did you?

Even then, they would not ask you to stop bidding. The would
ask you to stop something else.

You can bid on any word you wish. Nobody has a lock. That's
what adwords is for.

It must be profitable, or you would not be using it. It would not
be showing up.

Paul

[spartanic]

Last night I've talked to the affiliate manager of the clickbank offer that I was promoting and sure enough he confirms its all true. He also thinks its ridiculous that they're so anal about a generic term like "genealogy". He's going to have his lawyers talk to theirs to straighten this all out so in the meantime I'll have to stop bidding on that keyword for now.

Looks like this morning I received an email from Clickbank that they've been notified by the competing site's laywers to also change my ad copy. This is getting crazy!

[webdango]

Ultimately here's the deal-

When you are in an affiliate arrangement, the affiilate has total control over your marketing efforts.

Now in this case, from what youv'e written, it soudns as though the main site has an affiliate offer through ClickBank and when you promote that offer, you are in direct competition with them for a keyword they don't want you to use. So they tell ClickBank to tell you to stop using it, since they don't have your contact info directly.

That's the bad thing about aff marketing. I've been told to stop bidding on keywords simply because the main vendor didn't want affiliates bidding on them, whether it was in the terms or not. And even if it's not, all they have to do is change the terms.

Bear in mind the terms are not legally binding. Any affiliate can kick you out at any time for any (or not) reason.

I've had affiliates change terms or even kick me out because I was selling to much!

One of the risks of affiliate marketing: you have no control over the product, price rules the affiliate has or uses.

True story: I am kicked out of CJ. I was promoting a fitness machine using the brand name in the domain name. There was no prohibition against this in the terms. Well the site ran for over a year before it finally started pulling in traffic. I started generating some sales, all was good. I started generating MORE sales and I get contacted by CJ notifying me that I was using a brand name URL in violation of the publisher's terms. I checked it and sure enough the program had updated their terms to include a ban against using any form of their company name in the top level domain. CJ told me I had to take the site down.

So I switched from CJ to Amazon, since Amazon sold the same product.

A few days later I get a contact from CJ telling me if I didn't take the site down, I would be kicked out. I replied that since I was no longer using CJ affiliate links on the site, I didn't see the need to remove the site. Tehy replied that the company still wanted it gone. I refused. I mean, I'm not do CJ on it anymore!

The result?

CJ kicked me out.

BTW, the site is still up and still earning through Amazon.

[spartanic]

webdango, in my case however its not the Clickbank affiliate vendor who wants me to stop bidding on certain generic keywords and to change my ad copy, its a competing site outside of Clickbank that wants it done.

Clickbank says if I don't comply then my account gets banned.

Totally crazy isn't it? I'm not even promoting the competing site and yet they think they have the right to tell another competitor what to do.

Its like Walmart telling Kmart to stop selling PS3s because their selling it too and not only that but they should also change their slogan.

[Fraggler]

spartanic, did you read my message? If you haven't mentioned the competing sites website in your ad, like they claim you have, then you have done nothing wrong. Tell Clickbank this, that the cease and dease is not telling the truth. If you are using their domain in your ad then you are doing something 'naughty' and clickbank rightfully should make you stop.

webdango, you can't use trademarked terms in a domain name. That has nothing to do with CJ.com and you would receive the C&D eventually anyway. You started getting traffic so that means your site started to appear where the official site was too - they only caught on then..

[TheKeys]

Interesting.

It's really another scare tactic. You cannot copyright that word as it's so generic and you just seem as a threat to their company.

[webdango]

You can't copyright it, but my point was that any publisher or affiliate company can kick you out at any time for any reason.

[Groovystar]

You cannot copyright the word "genealogy". That isn't the issue though.

From reading all of this I really think you need a lawyer. I'd go with what Recommended said in #10. It looks to me like these people are just walking all over you over something that sounds really fishy to me.