Orion Bancorp took Orion Residential Finance (ORF) to court in
Florida over ORF's use of the word 'Orion' in relation to financial
services and products, arguing that it had used the term since 2002
and had held a trade mark for it since then.
ORF offered some similar services to Orion, mostly related to
housing finance. It was ordered by the US District Court for the
Middle District of Florida from to refrain "from any and all use of
the term Orion, Orion Residential Finance, or any other confusingly
similar term".
The judge in the case went further, though, restraining ORF from
"purchasing or using any form of advertising including keywords or
'adwords' in internet advertising containing any mark incorporating
Plaintiff’s Mark, or any confusingly similar mark, and shall, when
purchasing internet advertising using keywords, adwords or the
like, require the activation of the term 'Orion' as negative
keywords or negative adwords in any internet advertising purchased
or used".
Keyword advertising is the display of adverts on search results
pages which are triggered by the use of a certain term in the
search itself.
By 'negative adword', the judge is referring to the fact that
keyword advertising systems allow someone to instruct the system
never to display their advert when a certain term is searched for,
as well as to pay to have their ad displayed when a certain term is
searched for. Google, which runs the market-leading AdWords system,
calls them 'Negative Keywords'. In Yahoo!'s equivalent system,
advertisers can list terms as 'Excluded Words'.
Orion Bancorp took the case over the domain name
orionresidentialfinance.com, but took a general trade mark case
rather than a specific domain name case to the World Intellectual
Property Organisation (WIPO)'s dispute resolution service.
The ruling was a default judgment, since ORF did not submit an
opposing case, though it was represented by a lawyer in the hearing
itself.
The judge said that ORF "is and has been actively engaged in the
business of offering to the consuming public financial and real
estate related services utilizing the term ORION or various
iterations thereof, including use in interstate commerce, on
various signs, advertising, slogans, promotional material, a top
level domain name at www.orionresidentialfinance.com and other
matters containing the term “Orion”, all without Plaintiff’s
authorization or consent".
