Changes to AdWords Trademark Policy in the UK

Yesterday Google announced that they will be updating their PPC trademark policy from 14 September 2010. These changes will bring the UK, Ireland and Canada in line with America, whereby advertisers will be allowed to include trademarks they do not own in their ad text.

Additionally, on a Europe wide basis, advertisers will also be allowed to include trademarks as keywords within their AdWords accounts.

According to Dan Stokely, Google's product manager, the reasoning behind this update is to create a more useful and better service for both advertisers and users. The example he gives is of jeans resellers who will soon be able to include the brands that they resell in their ads.

My question is: how will brands react to this?

In many cases when I've worked with brands who allow others to resell their goods they tend to have trade agreements, whereby the reseller has signed a contract that stipulates they are not allowed to use the brand's trademarked terms in any PPC. However, in plenty of other cases I have come across, these same brands face issues with resellers who are not authorised or perhaps who do not really even have said brand's items but are simply trying to cash in on the name.

How do brands now protect their trademarked terms?  Dan Stokey has suggested that 'some' resellers will be allowed this privilege. Perhaps these will only be authorised resellers... I'll have to do some more investigation to follow up on this.