Over the weekend, an article found via DigitalPoint Forums was published in a New Zealand news site about financial authors and property investors whose names are being linked to an unaffiliated company through Google AdWords. They are disgruntled, to say the least, and they question the ethics of the practice.

One of the individuals explains his disgust pretty eloquently:

Property investor Kieran Trass, of the Hybrid Group said: "It's underhanded. I have nothing to do with that company, and I don't want to. They are leveraging off other people's efforts to gain a financial reward with no recompense to the people they are linking to.

Shoemoney writes in to say that this is trademark bidding and that people should take appropriate legal action.

This is called trademark bidding and it goes on all the time. There is legal recourse for trademark bidding I am surprised these people have putting up with it for so long.

Actually, unless the people have trademarks on their names, I'm not sure if it can be considered trademark bidding.

If the names are trademarked, however, legal action can be taken and you can file a complaint via Google for trademark violations. Since this particular violation is occurring outside the United States and Canada, Google also provides a means to report these concerns as well.

If names aren't trademarked, it's still nice to ask the people if you can bid on their name.

Forum discussion continues at DigitalPoint Forums.

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