Research On The Trademark Infringement Of Search Engine Rankings

Search Engine Ranking services, is a new mode of E-marketing by selling keywords to advertise company website.PPC services meet the needs of both sides. It is the inevitable outcome of the business development in the information society.Under this mode, entrepreneur can choose trademark as keywords, or choose others. The trademark infringement will occur only if the entrepreneur chooses trademark as keywords. The assistance for entrepreneurs who choose trademark as keywords may cause trademark infringement after search engine provider knows the entrepreneur have already constituted trademark infringement. Resolving the trademark infringement in PPC services is important for the development of intellectualproperty. This paper elaborates the legal nature of PPC services and trademark infringement elements of entrepreneur and search engine provider, analyses the existing problems. At last, this paper illustrates the importance of indirect infringement.There are four parts:the first part is the overview of PPC services. I first illustrate the definition and features of PPC services, and then the importance of the legal nature of PPC services. From above, I concluded the PPC service is a kind of commercial advertisement. As an advertiser, the importance of obligation to review from search engine provider is highlighted.The second part focuses on how to constitute trademark infringement for entrepreneurs. I first mainly studied on the trademark use and confusion in legal sense. Reasonably, entrepreneurs would constitute trademark infringement only if they have already constituted the trademark use and confusion in legal sense under the reasonable use premise.The third part analyses whether the search engine provider constituted indirect trademark infringement from two different perspectives:obligation to review and subjective fault. First illustrating the dispute of obligation and striking a balance in Absolute obligation and Comparative obligation. It can not onlystrengthen theirself-discipline but also alleviate the heavy duty on the search engine provider, then analyses the importance of subjective fault for tort liability.The last part is the exploration of establishing the independent indirect trademark infringement system in order to regulate the manner of infringement. Due to our country haven’t regarded the indirect infringement as an independent tort way, instead of joint infringement, so there is many new problems need to solve. It’s necessary to develop the indirect infringement system.