[thelist] A legal question (was: Lawyers and stuff)

There has been legal precedence set on this already.. The US judge found
that using a competitor's name in meta tags violates copyright laws..  

I'll see if I can dig up the article... Here we go..

Trade mark Infringement

During 1997, three actions were brought before the U.S. courts against web
site owners and web site designers for trade mark infringement. 

In the case of Playboy Enterprises Inc. and Calvin Designer Label, a
Californian court heard that Calvin had incorporated Playboy's (federally
registered) trade marks in its own meta-tags. Playboy claimed that this
constituted trade mark infringement, as Calvin sought to misdirect Internet
users, who would otherwise have searched for Playboy web sites, to its own
web site. The court upheld Playboy's claim, granting a restraining
injunction against Calvin. The court then ordered the web site publisher to
stop using Playboy's trade marks in any manner, including via meta-tags.
Interestingly, the court went further and also ordered that Calvin's
Internet domain names be withdrawn and control of the domain names be
transferred to the courts. This was because Calvin's domain names contained
elements of Playboy's trade marks.

See :
http://www.tarlo-lyons.com/depts/it/meta-tags.html

-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Van Dijck [mailto:pedro3@geo.net.co]
Sent: Friday, January 07, 2000 11:05 AM
To: thelist@lists.evolt.org
Subject: [thelist] A legal question (was: Lawyers and stuff)


Hi all,
hope nobody jumps over me for bad practices.
I have a client in Colombia (SA) that sells software internationally
trhough their site, and I figured this:
why not write an article comparing their product (which compares pretty
well) with that of the competition. And then make the page so it targets
the keywords of the competitions' brand in the searchengines. So if people
look for the competitions brand they'll also find this comparing article,
and may look at our product as well.

Is this evil?
Is this unfair competition?
Can we be sued (nothing surprises me from the US) for his?

Thanks for any advice,
Peter

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