Can they sue for placing Yandex ads on branded queries?

Question

Law in IT

I registered a domain and the situation began to unfold in an unexpected turn for me.

In general, it was like this. I analyzed the competition in Yandex direct results (on search) for the queries I was interested in in a certain niche, and by clicking on one of the domains from the advertisement, I found that the site was not working. This domain popped up in almost every query I was interested in with a suitable ad description and headlines. I thought, well, somehow, they spin ads for expensive queries and squander traffic. Then I thought, what if they forgot to renew this domain and decided to check it by voice. I was surprised - the domain has been out for 2 years already. Cool, I thought, and registered it. I hung my gasket on it and directed visitors to a suitable offer. Traffic comes steadily from someone else's direct advertising account. Who and when advertised on this domain, I have no idea, but it has been spinning for a long time and for almost a month now traffic like this has been pouring for free.

And bam, I get an email that was sent to me through the domain registrar from the person concerned (I have privacy enabled). This letter was written by the legal department of a very well-known large company with the essence that my domain is shown by their brand queries (company name) and they have exclusive rights to them as a registered trademark and ask me, as the owner of the domain, to remove the domain from the search results of the direct and Google for these queries and not use their company name in ads, otherwise I will have to "remain silent and everything I say will be used against me in court" in this circumstance.

So I have a question for the Habr board. Because I have not come across this yet, then I ask if anyone understands such legal entities. questions or dealt with disputes in this topic, then actually what to do?

The domain, if anything, is registered to fictitious passport data. This advertisement, for which I did not make any claims and did not order it, and I never paid for it. Am I obligated to take action now, because seems to have been notified by them about this problem - to explain everything so that they write to Yandex and ask them to suspend the RK there. Or can I ignore and continue to receive free traffic? What will I get for this?

Answer 1

To understand your prospects, you need to:
1. Get an official letter with a package of documents justifying the requirements of the person concerned;
2. Until you receive it in accordance with paragraph 1 - you can continue to use what you have.
PS "There are a lot of such interested parties now))) But in most cases they go through the forest)) (at least in the Russian Federation)"

Answer 2

The precedents were a year or two ago.
It is better to check in what form advertising hangs on the delirium of this campaign. If the campaign brand is not mentioned in the ads themselves in the SERP, but is used only in the form of keywords, then there are usually no problems. Otherwise, this is a direct violation.

Answer 3

If you are from Russia and advertising is shown on the search, then a fine from 500k to 5 million rubles may arrive, but this is when contacting the FAS, which is essentially a hemorrhoid. Here is an excerpt from the Plenum of the Supreme Court:

Clause 172. The use by an advertiser when placing contextual advertising on the Internet as a criterion for displaying an advertisement of keywords (phrases) that are identical or confusingly similar to a means of individualization belonging to another person, taking into account the purpose of such use, may be recognized as an act of unfair competition (Article 14.6 of the Federal Law "On Protection of Competition", Article 10.bis of the Paris Convention).

Usually, such issues are resolved either by a simple written request to remove these keywords from the RK (as in your case), or by contacting Yandex moderators directly - hence either the LC block or turning off the RK for corrections. Well, neither the first nor the second is scary for you, since the LK is not yours.
Alternatively, you can show up in YAN, since it is almost impossible to prove that you are shown exactly for their "keywords" - i.e. the notary should see your ad somewhere on the web and in the utm-tags during the transition, a forbidden key request, so to speak, should be indicated.