Can Competitors Buy Trademarked Keywords in Indian Online Advertising

Introduction : Search engines allow advertisers to bid on words that trigger the display of sponsored results. This creates a commercially important question: may a company purchase its competitor’s trademark as a keyword so that its advertisement appears when users search for the competitor? For example, a restaurant may bid on “McDonald’s” so that its advertisement appears when a user searches for McDonald’s restaurants. The advertiser may never display the word in the visible...