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BC Court of Appeal Sides with Keyword Advertiser
The British Columbia Court of Appeal recently released what appears to be the first Canadian appellate-level decision to deal substantively with keyword advertizing. In Private Training Institutions Agency v. Vancouver Career College (Burnaby), the Court of Appeal upheld a chambers judge’s ruling in favour of a private college that purchased keywords that included the names of its competitors from various search engines. When a keyword is purchased from a search engine, such as Google or Yahoo!, the purchaser’s website appears preferentially in the search results or is prominently displayed as a sponsored link when an Internet user conducts a search that includes that purchased keyword. In the present case, the Vancouver Career College (Burnaby) purchased keywords with the names of rival private career training institutions so that when users searched for these institutions the Vancouver Career College’s website would prominently be returned in the search results.
The Private Training Institutions Agency (PTIA), a regulatory body that oversees career training schools in BC, sought an injunction to stop the college from using the keyword advertising strategy. PTIA argued that the college’s actions contravened the regulator’s Bylaw 29(1), which prohibits false, deceptive or misleading advertising. The chambers judge disagreed, as did the Court of Appeal.
Justice Chiasson, writing for the appellate body, identified the key issue as whether there were reasonable grounds to believe that the advertising strategy was misleading. He upheld the chamber judge’s finding that the strategy would not lead potential students astray because there was enough information available to adequately alert users of the college’s website as to the underlying identity of the site. It would be reasonably expected that potential students, presumably of normal intelligence, would approach a matter as important as deciding on a career training institution with some care, and would not be misled by the advertising strategy.
For additional information, visit:
https://service.clearservice.com/itcan/campaignimages/1/www/newsletters/022411.pdf