Google AdWords treats the importance of trademarks very seriously, in fact on Google AdWords Terms and Conditions, the intellectual property infringement by advertisers is strictly forbidden and there are stringent measures in order to arrest such behavior and disciplinary actions are implemented to make sure that all advertisers are given equal advertising opportunities. Each advertiser is held responsible for the keywords that they opt for in order to generate ads and the texts that they choose to use in all those ads that they create.
Whenever an allegation is made on trademark infringement, Google investigates the matter at hand in a very serious manner especially if the issue is raised by a trademark owner, an entity who legally paid for the exclusive use of a product or any representation of it. The trademark infringement issue is not a new thing, especially with companies such as Google whose line of business encompasses all boundaries and since trademarks are territorial meaning the coverage of a trademark is bound into a specific area, it is but normal that different entities may own the same kind of logo or mark in different countries.
So the first thing that Google does is it tries to determine the validity of the trademark in question, information on the scope of area where the trademark is considered still valid and for what exact goods or services (since a brand for a certain coffee product can also be used as a name for another totally different product which is no way related to coffee like for instance the brand of a bed or the name of a hotel and there are no infringement issues there). The trademark infringement complaint investigation process can apply not only to Google Advertisers but to non-AdWords advertisers as well, yet the complaint and the investigation will only affect ads served on Google.
The issue of trademark infringement and its accompanying complaints and investigations cannot be applied to organic search results, only to the sponsored links so if the complaint is about a trademark that appeared on the Google search results, the complainant has to take it up with the site owner directly. If the issue is with AdSense for Domains, the investigation affects only the participation of the domain name in question in the AdSense for Domains program.
And since these ads are just passing through Google and Google is no way a third party arbiter, Google encourages the complainants or the trademark owners to send their disputes directly to the website owners in question. The reason for this is because the advertisers may have similar ads going on running in other advertising programs and if the complaint is sent through Google, the investigation will only be confines in the Google domain.
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