If you own the trademark to a term, word, or phrase, you may be wondering how to handle unauthorized use of your terms in AdWords search advertising.  Is the competition just allowed to use your trademarked terms to take business away from you or advertise products/services with which you do not want to be associated?  Of course not.

In part 1 of a 2 part series, Inside AdWords looks at how to handle trademark issues within the AdWords search advertising system.

If you own the trademark to terms being used in someone else's AdWords campaign, Google has official complaint forms that you can fill out.  Depending on the individual terms and situation, Google will review the complaint and, if approved, will remove offending ads from its network.  If there are specific entities to which you have given permission to use your trademarked terms, you can specify those entities in the complaint so that their ads are not removed.  Trademark owners should bookmark the complaint forms in case the need arises to file one.

If you don't own the trademark to a term you want to use (and you know someone else does own it), it's probably best to avoid using the terms.  As this post points out, there are avenues for removing those ads from circulation and it'd be a shame to waste money on a campaign that gets pulled.

We'll keep your posted on the 2nd part of the series.