Brand Name Protection Service Launched

Thomson & Thomson (T&T), a trademark, copyright and online brand identity research company, delivered BannerStake, a free tool that helps organizations monitor and protect the integrity of their brand names online.

BannerStake was added to T&T’s portfolio of trademark research services in response to the growing number of lawsuits involving online trademark infringement, the company said.

Available on T&T’s Web site, BannerStake provides users with a display of the banner advertisements associated with keyword purchases on major search engines. In the case of keyword purchases on major search engines, any given company generally can ensure that their banner advertising is provided in association with a competitor’s brand or trademark, potentially causing confusion for users and leading to possible customer attrition.

Estee Lauder recently filed a lawsuit against Excite alleging trademark infringement over such a key-word purchase. Organizations can now rely on BannerStake to preserve their brand equity, as well as safeguard against potential trademark infringement, T&T said.

BannerStake can also be used to gather intelligence about the keyword purchases of competitors.

“We are pleased to extend T&T’s core competency of providing the most comprehensive and reliable trademark and copyright research, to also include online brand management,” said Jay Gast, president of Thomson & Thomson.

BannerStake users simply type in a word and BannerStake returns a display of the banner advertisements associated with that same word that have been purchased on each of the search engines.

Thomson & Thomson, a subsidiary of The Thomson Corp., maintains a large collection of international trademark information, and provides a variety of search and monitoring services to its clients. In addition, it maintains a database of domain names from more than 240 countries.