Comment by delfinom
20 days ago
Advertising alternatives to trademarked names is completely legal in every sense. It's known as comparative advertising and is established for more than a century.
You simply cannot pretend to be that trademark product/business and you cannot disparage that trademark.
> You simply cannot pretend to be that trademark product/business
Some fraction of consumers are duped. Otherwise there wouldn't be so many knockoffs.
If I enter Acme Orbital Thrusters into a search engine, the exact match, their actual website, must be the top hit. Otherwise it's a racket, not a search engine.
What if Acme Orbital Thrusters is a long-running, covered-up fraudster? Why should they get to automatically outrank sites exposing their crimes?
Or what about when there are multiple trademarks for different goods and services from different companies that are all exact matches for the search terms?
How much did you pay for that search engine?
You worried Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple will cease to exist if they stop tricking their audience?
Trademarks differentiate products. App Store is full of shady clones with near identical icons, screenshots and names that differ from the original by a few letters.