Fionn O’Raghallaigh and Emma Barraclough, London
Google will allow companies to use their competitors' trade marks as keywords throughout the European Union later this month.
A decision from the Court of Justice of the European Union in March in a high-profile dispute between Google and LVMH has emboldened the search engine to extend the policy it applies in much of the rest of the world to EU and EFTA member states.
In the LVMH case, referred to it by France's Cour de cassation, Europe's top court said that a referencing service provider such as Google can allow its advertising clients to use signs that are identical with, or similar to, trade marks, without being deemed to be using those signs itself.
If a trade mark has been used as a keyword, the owner of that trade mark cannot rely, as against Google, on the exclusive right it derives from...