I found that Williams-Sonoma continued to show ads for “Bodum” searches in Google, even after the lawsuit was launched, although they apparently stopped showing their “related searches” page for organic search. as the trial began to escalate. Williams-Sonoma advertising products for keyword search results "Bodum French Press".While it is generally not considered an offense to run online advertisements targeting competitors'
brand names, if it is determined that they have infringed, ad targeting could also be considered further evidence of an overall effort to unfairly divert sales from Bodum and could also have been seen as part of a confusing sequence in which consumers could be tricked jewelry retouching service into thinking that the Williams-Sonoma French presses were actually Bodum's. I would argue that if a company is found to be infringing, even the normally acceptable use of a competitor's mark could be considered in the context of illegal use of the
mark when determining the intentionality of the infringement, as well than in the evaluation of total false impressions. I believe that such an advertisement could constitute another form of confusion of initial interests, or an exacerbation thereof, since a consumer could search for "Bodum", see the Williams-Sonoma advertisements, click on the website where he might also come across the “Bodum” branded search results pages.