Every Singapore advertiser arrives at this question sooner or later, usually about six weeks into a Google Ads account, when someone notices that a rival’s company name converts at three times the rate of the generic keywords. Can you bid on it?
The answer you will usually get — “Google allows it, so it’s fine” — is true and useless, because it answers only half the question. Google’s policy is a private set of rules that governs whether your ad runs. Singapore’s Trade Marks Act 1998 is law, and it governs whether you get sued. They are not the same rulebook, they have different triggers, and only one of them can cost you money.
In 2025 the Singapore Court of Appeal decided the case that finally puts a Singapore answer on this — and the answer is more permissive than most advertisers expect, but for a reason far narrower than “it’s allowed”. This guide works through both rulebooks, the decision, the one statutory provision that makes a letter of demand the most important moment in the whole dispute, and what to do in an account. It sits alongside our Google Ads Singapore guide. It is general information, not legal advice — a borderline call on a specific brand name is worth thirty minutes of a trade mark lawyer’s time.
Two rulebooks, and only one of them is law
Almost every argument about competitor bidding goes wrong because the two rulebooks get collapsed into one. Google’s policy is a contract term, enforced by Google on a complaint from the mark owner, and the remedy is that your ads stop running — a matter of days, costing you traffic. The Trade Marks Act is a statute, enforced by the mark owner in the Singapore courts, triggered by a letter of demand and then a writ, and the remedy is an injunction plus damages or an account of profits, over months to years, at legal fees that dwarf the media budget.
So Google’s policy is where the dispute usually ends, and the Act is where it becomes expensive. That does not make the law irrelevant — it is the law that determines who blinks.
Rulebook one: what Google’s policy actually says
Google’s trademark policy makes a sharp distinction that is easy to miss.
Keywords are not restricted. Google does not police the use of trade marks as keywords: you can add a competitor’s brand name to a keyword list and Google will neither stop you nor act on a complaint about it. That has been the position for years, and it is the source of the “Google allows it” shorthand.
Ad text is restricted. Google will restrict a trade mark in ad text on complaint from the owner, and specifically restricts use by direct competitors and any use that is confusing, deceptive or misleading. Carve-outs exist for resellers whose landing page clearly sells the product with commercial detail such as pricing, for informational sites about the product, for descriptive use of a word in its ordinary meaning, and for a mark in the second-level domain of a display URL.
Two operational details matter more than the policy text. First, Google accepts complaints only from owners who have demonstrated trade mark rights in the relevant country and industry — a Singapore registration is the clean way to do that, which makes it the single most concrete reason for a Singapore business to register its own mark, and the same reason that unlocks platform brand-protection tooling generally (we covered the registration mechanics and cost in the guide to what to do when someone impersonates your brand in Singapore). Second, a restriction attaches to the second-level domain in the final URL, not to the individual ad, and applies on an ongoing basis to every ad pointing at that domain. You do not fix it by pausing one ad group.
Rulebook two: the Trade Marks Act, and the threshold that decides everything
Section 27 sets out infringement. The limbs that matter here are s27(1) — using in the course of trade a sign identical with the mark in relation to identical goods or services — and s27(2)(b), using a similar sign in relation to identical or similar goods or services where there exists a likelihood of confusion on the part of the public. A separate limb, s27(3), protects marks well known in Singapore even across dissimilar goods and services.
Advertising is expressly caught: section 27(4)(e) provides that a person uses a sign if, in particular, the person “uses the sign in advertising”. There is no argument to be had about whether a search ad is within the Act’s concept of use. It is. But being within the definition is not the end. Singapore law imposes a threshold — the sign must be used as a trade mark, as a badge of origin telling the public where the goods or services come from, rather than descriptively or decoratively. That threshold is where competitor bidding cases in Singapore are now won and lost.
The 2025 decision: East Coast Podiatry v Family Podiatry
In East Coast Podiatry Centre Pte Ltd v Family Podiatry Centre Pte Ltd [2025] SGCA 28 (reported at [2025] 1 SLR 914), the Court of Appeal — Sundaresh Menon CJ, Steven Chong JCA and Andrew Phang SJ — dealt squarely with search advertising.
The appellant owned a composite registered mark combining the words “East Coast Podiatry” with a device element, and operated four clinics. The respondent, opening a new branch in Joo Chiat, ran Google Ads using the phrases “east coast podiatry”, “Podiatry East Coast” and “Podiatrist East Coast”. On the record, a Google consultant had advised the respondent to use location-based keywords. The appellant sued under ss 27(1) and 27(2)(b) and in passing off. The High Court dismissed both claims ([2024] SGHC 102); the Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal.
The reasoning is what matters. The Court held that the threshold of trade mark use was not met: the respondent’s use was “clearly descriptive in nature”, because “east coast” denotes a geographical area of Singapore and, combined with the podiatry terms, simply described the services offered in that region. Even if the threshold had been crossed, the signs were not sufficiently similar to the composite registered mark to infringe.
Three considerations were set out for deciding whether a sign is used as a badge of origin. First, the objective circumstances — how the advertisement is presented, the prominence and purpose of the signs, and whether other signs are used alongside them, with the defendant’s subjective intention relevant but not decisive. Second, the distinctiveness of the sign: “greater latitude must be afforded to a defendant who uses words or ideas of a generic nature, even if these have some similarity to what is found in the registered mark”. Third, the destination website — the court may consider the content of the site a user is redirected to on clicking, and here the respondent’s URL and branding made the true origin clear.
Two things the decision did not do matter as much as what it did. It did not hold that keyword bidding is lawful in general — it accepted that keyword cases can infringe even where the resulting advertisement does not display the sign. And it created no defence; it decided the case at the threshold, before any defence was needed. The practical read is that Singapore advertisers have more latitude with descriptive and generic terms than their counterparts in the UK or Europe, and no more latitude at all with invented ones.
The distinction that decides your case
Everything in that judgment turns on how distinctive the competitor’s name is. That is the variable to assess before you touch the keyword list, and it is less a legal question than a linguistic one.
| Name type | What it looks like | Keyword only | In ad text |
|---|---|---|---|
| Descriptive / geographic | A service word plus a place or category: “<district> dental”, “Singapore office movers” | Low. The East Coast Podiatry fact pattern. | Moderate. Probably still descriptive, but Google will restrict it on complaint. |
| Suggestive or arbitrary | An ordinary word used allusively, or one with no connection at all to the service | Low to moderate. Distinctiveness is a spectrum, not a switch. | Moderate to high. Harder to argue you are describing anything. |
| Invented / coined | A made-up word that means nothing outside that business | Moderate to high. | High. No descriptive story to tell, and a coined mark is at its most distinctive. |
| Well known in Singapore | A mark with substantial local recognition | High. s27(3) reaches further, including across dissimilar goods and services. | Very high. |
The workable heuristic: if you removed the competitor from the market entirely, would anyone still search that phrase to describe the service? “East coast podiatry” survives that test — someone looking for a podiatrist in the east would still type it. A coined brand name does not survive it, because the only reason anyone types it is to reach that one company.
Section 27(5): the provision nobody mentions
At the end of section 27 sits a provision that changes how a competitor-bidding dispute actually unfolds, and it applies specifically to advertising. Section 27(5) provides that a person who uses a sign “on any document described in subsection (4)(d) or in advertising” is deemed not to use the sign if, at the time of that use, “the person does not know nor have reason to believe that the proprietor or a licensee of the registered trade mark did not consent to such application or use of the sign”.
Read that carefully, because the consequence is unusual. An advertiser who genuinely did not know is not merely excused — they are deemed not to have used the sign at all, so the infringement claim fails at its first element rather than at a defence.
And the corollary is the practical point. The moment a letter of demand or an upheld Google trade mark complaint lands in your inbox, you have reason to believe. Whatever the position was before, it is different afterwards. Everything that runs from that day onward is a materially worse case than everything that ran before it.
Three things follow. Pause first, argue second — the cost of a week’s pause while you take advice is a rounding error next to the argument you create by not pausing. Keep dated evidence: Google Ads change history is exportable, so export it with timestamps and file it with the letter. And do not let an agency handle this silently; a demand letter answered by an account manager without escalation is exactly the sort of gap worth checking before you sign, alongside our list of agency red flags in Singapore.
If the sign is used: the defences in section 28
Where the threshold of trade mark use is crossed, section 28 sets out acts that do not amount to infringement. Four matter to advertising.
- s28(1)(a) — own name, or the name of your place of business, provided the use accords with honest practices in industrial or commercial matters.
- s28(1)(b) — descriptive indications: using a sign to indicate “the kind, quality, quantity, intended purpose, value, geographical origin or other characteristic” of goods or services, again subject to honest practices. This is the statutory cousin of the reasoning in East Coast Podiatry, where “geographical origin” is doing visible work.
- s28(1)(c) — intended purpose, “in particular as accessories or spare parts”. The compatibility case: an ad saying your product works with a named system.
- s28(4)(a) — comparative advertising: using a registered trade mark does not infringe it where the use “constitutes fair use in comparative commercial advertising or promotion”.
That last one deserves emphasis, because Singapore is more permissive here than many advertisers assume. Comparative advertising has an express statutory defence in Singapore — you may name a competitor and compare against them. But the defence is bounded by the word “fair”, which the Act does not define, and the burden of establishing it sits on the party who asserts it.
What “fair” is taken to require in practice is unglamorous and specific:
- Compare like with like, and use a consistent data set on both sides. Drawing your figures from one source and theirs from another, where that creates a misleading impression of superiority, is the classic failure.
- Where different data must be used, qualify it clearly and visibly, in language a lay reader can follow — not in a footnote in six-point grey.
- State nothing false, do not disparage, and do not copy their layout, get-up or slogans so closely that a reasonable person could be confused about who is speaking.
A comparison page that names a competitor and states verifiable, sourced, like-for-like differences is a legitimate and often very effective asset. One built on a favourable reading of your numbers and a pessimistic reading of theirs is precisely what the word “fair” exists to exclude.
The second claim: passing off
Passing off is a separate common-law claim needing no registration: goodwill in the claimant’s get-up, a misrepresentation likely to lead the public to believe the goods or services offered are the claimant’s, and damage. The same distinctiveness point recurs — a business trading under a descriptive name has thin goodwill in it, because the same words describe what every competitor does. In East Coast Podiatry the passing off claim failed alongside the trade mark claim, the usual pattern where the sign is descriptive and the destination site clearly identifies the advertiser.
What to actually do in the account
A procedure that keeps you out of trouble without giving up the tactic entirely.
1. Classify each competitor term before it goes in — descriptive, suggestive, invented, well known — and write the classification next to the keyword. That ten minutes is the entire risk assessment.
2. Keep the sign out of the ad text. The highest-leverage rule, and it costs almost nothing: nearly all of the risk, policy and legal alike, sits in the visible copy rather than the keyword list.
3. Make the destination page unambiguous. The Court of Appeal said the destination site is fair game in assessing origin, so a landing page with your logo above the fold, your name in the URL and no visual borrowing from the competitor is doing legal work, not just conversion work.
4. Use exact match and tight negatives. Broad match on a competitor’s name pulls in variants you never intended, including misspellings sitting much closer to their registered mark than the term you chose — see match types and negative keywords.
5. Check who is bidding on you in Auction Insights, and decide in advance who handles a letter, with authority to pause a campaign without waiting for a meeting.
The economics, which usually decide it anyway
Before any of the legal analysis, there is a commercial question that settles a lot of these debates without a lawyer: competitor brand terms are usually bad media, and the reason is structural. Quality Score is driven substantially by expected click-through rate, ad relevance and landing page experience. An ad for your business, shown against a search for a competitor’s business, is by definition less relevant to that query than the competitor’s own ad. Lower relevance means a lower Ad Rank, which means you pay more per click for a worse position — the mechanics are in our guide to Quality Score in Singapore. Meanwhile the searcher has already chosen a supplier; they typed a company name, not a need.
The result is a familiar pattern: high cost per click, low click-through rate, low conversion rate, and a cost per acquisition that looks nothing like the rest of the account. Set a kill threshold before you start and hold to it. Where the tactic does earn its place it shares three features — a considered purchase with a long evaluation window, a documentable point of difference, and a comparison landing page that earns the click rather than intercepting it. That is a content asset, not a bidding trick.
Defending your own brand terms
The mirror image is worth more to most Singapore SMEs than the offensive play, and it is where the budget usually belongs. Register the mark — it is the precondition for Google’s complaint process and for platform brand-protection tooling generally, and everything else is weaker without it. Run a brand campaign and monitor it: exact match on your own name, a small dedicated budget, tight ads; it is cheap because your relevance on your own name is unbeatable, and Auction Insights shows exactly who is appearing against you. Escalate through Google first, because a trade mark complaint is free, fast and often ends the matter. And do not neglect the organic side — two of your listings on the page is a materially different outcome from one, as we set out in SEO versus Google Ads in Singapore.
Frequently asked questions
Is it illegal to bid on a competitor’s brand name in Singapore?
Not as a general proposition. Google permits trade marks as keywords, and in East Coast Podiatry Centre Pte Ltd v Family Podiatry Centre Pte Ltd [2025] SGCA 28 the Court of Appeal held that using a competitor’s descriptive, geographic name in search advertising did not even cross the threshold of trade mark use, because the words described a location and a service rather than acting as a badge of origin. That reasoning does not extend to invented or well-known marks, where the same use is far more likely to be actionable.
Can I put a competitor’s name in my ad copy?
This is where the risk concentrates. Section 27(4)(e) of the Trade Marks Act expressly treats using a sign in advertising as use of the sign, and Google will restrict a competitor’s trade mark in ad text on complaint from a rights holder who has demonstrated rights in Singapore. Defences exist, including descriptive use under section 28(1)(b) and fair use in comparative advertising under section 28(4)(a), but a defence is something you must establish, which is a worse position than never being in scope.
Is comparative advertising allowed in Singapore?
Yes, expressly. Section 28(4)(a) of the Trade Marks Act 1998 provides that using a registered trade mark does not infringe it where the use constitutes fair use in comparative commercial advertising or promotion. The limit is the word fair: compare genuinely equivalent offerings, use consistent data on both sides, qualify differences clearly and visibly, avoid false statements and disparagement, and do not imitate the competitor’s layout or slogans. The burden of establishing fair use falls on the party relying on it.
What should I do if I receive a letter of demand about my ads?
Pause the affected keywords and ads the same day, export the change history with timestamps, and take advice before replying. The reason is section 27(5): a person using a sign in advertising is deemed not to use it if at the time they did not know nor have reason to believe the proprietor did not consent. Once the letter arrives you have reason to believe, so continuing to run the ads creates a materially worse case than the one that existed before it landed.
How do I stop a competitor bidding on my brand name?
Register your trade mark in Singapore first, because Google accepts trade mark complaints only from owners who have demonstrated rights in the relevant country and industry. Then file a complaint with Google, which is free, usually resolves in days, and restricts use of your mark in the competitor’s ad text on an ongoing basis for the domain in their final URL. In parallel, run a tightly matched brand campaign of your own, and watch Auction Insights to see who else is appearing.
The same gap between a platform policy and the law opens up in the other direction on hiring campaigns. There, Meta operates a Special Ad Category that strips age, gender, postcode, exclusions and lookalikes out of employment ads — but only for advertisers based in or reaching the US, and those reaching Canada and parts of Europe. A Singapore-targeted job ad keeps every one of those controls, while MOM’s rules apply anyway. We set out what that means for the copy and the targeting in our guide to recruitment advertising in Singapore.
Where this leaves you
The Singapore position after 2025 is narrower and clearer than the folklore. Bidding on a competitor’s name is not, in itself, unlawful, and where the name is descriptive or geographic the Court of Appeal has said the use may not even be use as a trade mark. But that latitude comes from the descriptiveness of the words, not from any principle that keyword bidding is fine — point the same tactic at a coined name and the analysis changes completely. Keep the sign out of your ad text and most of the risk disappears at almost no cost; make your landing page unambiguous about who you are; and if a letter arrives, pause first, because section 27(5) rewards the advertiser who did not know and punishes the one who kept going.
If you want a second pair of eyes on a Google Ads account — the keyword lists, the brand defence, and whether the competitor campaign is earning its budget — that is the kind of review our Google Ads management engagements start with, and you can see the sort of outcomes we report in our Singapore case studies.
Sources: Trade Marks Act 1998 (Singapore), sections 27 and 28, Singapore Statutes Online, current version as at 4 September 2026; East Coast Podiatry Centre Pte Ltd v Family Podiatry Centre Pte Ltd [2025] SGCA 28, [2025] 1 SLR 914, and the case brief published by the Singapore Courts; East Coast Podiatry Centre Pte Ltd v Family Podiatry Centre Pte Ltd [2024] SGHC 102; commentary on [2025] SGCA 28 by Mayer Brown and Baker McKenzie; Google Ads Help, trademark policy. This is general information, not legal advice; rules and cases change — verify before relying on them.
