Chaoyang district court in Beijing ruled that Evercare (Chinese name: Yi Mei Er) and Baidu engaged in unfair competition and ordered them to pay over 130,000 yuan for damages to Shisanba Co.
Evercare beauty salon started paid search advertising on Baidu on August 15, 2007. Evercare started bidding on its competitor’s brand name “Shisanba” on April 17, 2009 and used “Shisanba” as headline of its PPC ad copy, which of course directs people whoever clicks on the ad to Evercare’s own website.
The court thinks Evercare bid on a well-known beauty salon’s brand name “Shisanba” and purposely misled visitors to its own websites, which constitutes unfair competition. And, Baidu helped the act and should share the liability.
I suggest you not bid on competitor keywords or use competitor’s brand in your ad copies. If you are doing both, you could be in trouble especially when your competitor is well known.
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