This Class46 member had the honour to speak at the annual CIPA Congress in London today  (The IP System under Attack) at a workshop on the ominpresent topic of "AdWords/keywords".  My presentation covered the German  perspective and outlines the evoloution of the German courts' position from the "Impuls" case on meta-tags to the recent decisions in PCB (I ZR 139/07 ) and the ECJ referral in "Bananabay" (I ZR 125/07) aka "Eis.de GmbH v BBY Vertriebsgesellschaft mbH" (Case C-91/09).

While this presentation will soon be aout of date once the several ECJ decisions on AdWords/keywords have been handed down, it will still be an interesting exercise to see whether the German courts had got it right when they decided  in the parallel case on company names (Beta Layout,  I ZR 30/07) that the average consumer would not be confused by the search engine's layout and be able to distinguish between organic search results and sponsored links.  Let's see whether the ECJ agrees - if the AG's opinion is any indication, then the ECJ just might.

If you are interested in a copy of this presentation, please feel free to email me at bclark (at) boult.com.