Lawyers from competing site wants me to stop bidding on keyword

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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, 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..

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.

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.

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.