Your trademark can serve better than only R in circle. One of the opportunities is the Google Trademark Complaint procedure. Let’s see. Imagine, you have discovered that somebody uses your trademark term in Google ads or as part of keyword. Not a good situation. Also you may prevent beforehand any illegal exploitation of your trademark. In both cases the solution is to file Google a trademark complaint.
After Google receives your trademark complaint, it will lead the research that affect on the using of your trademark (text or design) in ads or keyword by advertisers. Actually they will be asked to issue ads/keywords without the trademarked term or send request to your for authorization. Also you, as owner of trademark, can bar all advertisers or specific advertisers with specific URLs from using the trademark term.
But remember, the ads, howbeit, could be triggered by search query that contain your trademark term. It happens due to the possibility namely broad matching system, which allows advertisers to target their ads in specific way. Imagine, your trademark term is ‘Star’. Someone’s advertisement triggered by keyword ‘cap’ and search query was ‘Star cap’, do you have a sense of what will happen? The ad will appear as a sponsored link quite legally. And there is one additional “but” you must to keep in mind: Google does not investigate for keywords in the US, Canada, UK, and Ireland, just for ads.
So, if you think that this operation will be useful for your business, I mean trademark complaint, fill the printable complaint form (http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/request.py?fhc=1&ctx=tmcomplaint) correctly and gain the benefit from that R in circle.
AdWords Trademark Authorization Process.
Google also have applied the authorization form (https://services.google.com/inquiry/aw_tmauth), which allows trademark owners or contact person listed on the trademark complaint to grant full permission of using the trademark. Once more, you are not able to specify any conditions for which the trademark may only be used, Google provide only admission of the trademark using. But, if an advertiser has been banned from using the trademark and disagrees with such a decision, he can contact the trademark owner directly to request the permission. Also trademark owner may recall authorization at any time.