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Comment by jcampbell1 | Hacker News Reader

Germans apparently allow all sorts of English words to be trademarked. I ran into the problem buying Google ads, and the ads would get rejected for a trademark violation. The whole campaign would get messed up because I targeted english speakers worldwide and the ads got rejected because the word "immersion" is trademarked in Germany.

Edit: I think Google has since improved the error message and gives a message like "Ad is running, but cannot be run in all regions due to a trademark issue." Adwords used to just reject the ad with ominous text "trademark violation".

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"Germans apparently allow all sorts of English words to be trademarked [...] because the word "immersion" is trademarked in Germany.

Immersion is a German word.

(as many others comes from Latin as the English word does)

  (Physik) Einbetten eines Objekts in eine Flüssigkeit mit besonderen lichtbrechenden Eigenschaften (zur Untersuchung von Kristallformen und in der Mikroskopie)
  (Astronomie) Eintritt eines Himmelskörpers in den Schatten eines anderen
  Methode des Fremdsprachenunterrichts, bei der die Schüler von Anfang an in großem Umfang in der Fremdsprache unterrichtet werden
  (EDV) Eintauchen in eine virtuelle Umgebung

http://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/Immersion

"Germans apparently allow all sorts of English words to be trademarked."

Like "Apple"?

In the US, you couldn't trademark the word "Apple" in the food category since it is the term for a group of fruits. It is valid in other categories.

Which means it should at most be blocked for categories in which a trademark is held, not for ads in other categories, or use as a generic word - if at all.

Not sure about German law or how much research they do into words before they allow the trademark. It does seem a bit of due diligence was missed.

You are right, that may not be a fair characterization. The problem I see is how a list of trademarked words becomes blacklisted for use in advertising. I am fine if Germans want to let any word be trademarked, and then sort it out later in the court system. But we have a situation where the trademark list is auto-uploaded to Google and stops the word "hackathon" from being used in ads in Germany, thus a real problem.

The automatic trademark blacklist in Google adwords is really idiotic even if the trademark is valid. I once tried making an ad for my Mac app, and I couldn't include the word "Mac" or "Mac OS" in the copy because they are trademarks.

I had literally the exact same issue. They said I had to get them paperwork from Apple's legal department, ignoring Apple trademark page saying it's okay to use the Mac trademark to sell a Mac app which I forwarded to them with an explanation.

My exact ad said "Try _____, a better way to _____ for Windows and Mac".

They didn't mention the Windows trademark. Pfft.

"Bonjour(tm), tu as touché(tm) du doigt un vrai problème durant ton exposé(tm)."

"Hello, you pointed out a real issue during your talk."

Does that mean I can block companies from using any word I like, by trademarking it in Germany, since they seem to let you trademark any words?

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