News has surfaced recently that international florists Interflora are to sue supermarket and fashion retail chain Marks & Spencer for buying the Interflora brand name as a keyword for a Pay Per Click campaign for their own florist services.

Interflora are accusing M&S of bidding on both the term "Interflora" and a number of miss-spellings of the brand name, including "Inter-flora" and  "Intaflora" as part of their online marketing campaign in an attempt to "steal" customers from the Detroit based florists. The company claim it is an infringement upon the Interflora trade mark.

A spokesperson for Marks & Spencer stated "We are extremely surprised Interflora has taken this course of action. This is industry-wide practice and is not unlawful."

The case could set a precident on the practice of bidding on competitors brand names for PPC marketing with only two other related cases having passed through UK courts.

In 2008 the High Court dismissed a keyword advertising case against Yahoo! by ruling that Yahoo! did not infringe upon a businessmans trade mark by displaying advertisments for supermarket Sainsbury's and others when users searched for his trade mark as a search term. While Victor Wilson argued that his mark "Mr Spicy" was being infringed upon, the court ruled that only the English word "spicy" was being sponsored and therefore, not Wilson's trade mark.

Prior to this, the only other recorded case on this subject was between recruitment agency Reed Executives and publishers Reed Business Information over a dispute over the display of banner ad for totaljobs.com operated by Reed Business Information, on the Yahoo! search results page for the term "Reed". Reed Executives sued the publishers aleging trade mark infringement.

The case, brought forward under section 10(2) of the Trade Marks Act 1994, which requires evidence of "a likelihood of confusion on the part of the public", was ruled against by Lord Justice Jacobs who cited that the average customer would not be confused into thinking the banner ad carrying the brand totaljobs.com, with no reference to Reed, could be confused for Reed Executives.

The sections of the Trade Marks Act that Interflora are relying upon (sections 10(1) and 10(3)) do not require evidence of confusion, effectively giving Interflora a good case.

The outcome of the decision could have serious implications for a number of PPC marketers who develop strategies specifically designed to compete with brands over their own names and trade marks.