The trademark in question is Interflora, the offender, none other than UK high street superbrand: Marks & Spencer. You can read more about that case over on The Register, but yesterday's news is of much more importance.

Yesterday, the EU Court of Justice (full judgement can be found here) ruled in Interflora's favour stating that M&S are in breach of trademarks in place and should not be allowed to profit off of someone else's trademark. The UK High Court needs to now follow suit with the Court of Justice's ruling, which Interflora expect to happen during the course of 2012.

If/Once the High Court applies this change, this will set the precedent for all other companies to block their competitors from bidding on brand names thus taking away potential profits from that company. That leaves a really important question ringing through my head:

Will Google block people from advertising on partial brand names?

For example, could I bid on "inter flowers" "flora inter" etc? The reason I ask, is because within this great iGaming industry in which I work, there are a lot of major players who have a pretty important word in their brand name: bet. If no partial brand-bidding will be allowed either, is it going to be a matter of advertising spend that decides on who gets to use "bet" as part of their brand name? Betfred (who, incidentally finally relaunched their site after over a year of planning, preparation, development and deployment), Betfair, Bet365, 188Bet, SkyBet, SportingBet, UniBet, BetDaq and plenty more will be fighting over it!

Click for bigness

I'm no prude, but I thought the advert on this piece of news was a little inappropriate. I regularly check the news from client offices, and although it's innocent enough, could be glanced at from a distance and be very misleading as to the content I was viewing.

Thoughts in the comments, email or snail mail.

Should Google simply wipe the slate as a beginner's mistake? Or should she be made to pay? Why should ignorance over rule accountability? If I test drove a Ferrari having never driven a car before, and crashed it, surely I would be held accountable?