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Handling Accusations of Trademark Infringement?
Dredd2Kad asks: "Recently I've been accused of trademark infringement because of something in the metadata of my website. What are my rights? Should I stand and fight or let it go? Part of me doesn't care, because my website is nothing but a special interest group, the other part of me is mad as hell that someone has come to my place and threatened me. I feel the plaintiff chose to trademark something really generic (HardRadio), and my choice of metadata (hard radio) should be allowed some wiggle room, especially since I'm not a commercial entity like they are. Please read
my story and let me know what you think. I know someone out there must have had a similar problem." In addition to seeking professional legal advice, what other steps can one take to handle these problems?
Google gives it almost no weight (descriptions get a little bit of weight, but keywords almost none), and neither does any other modern search engine. It was just too easy to abuse, so they rightly dropped the idea. I'm not saying you necessarily need to give up your fight, but you're fighting over an antiquated piece of search optimization.
In your metadata, put "HardRadio is a TM of bla bla bla, Inc.". That's really all you need to do. You'll find that all the time in magazine ads that reference other companies products.
IANAL, but unless it is a registered trademark (R), it is not really something they can enforce. Certainly, they cannot do anything about you using 2 separate words when their (TM) is on the combined words. It would be thrown out of court in minutes.
When a company wants to change their (TM) to an (R), they have to go through a registration process, part of which involves checking for existing uses of the term. Should there be too many instances of the term that are prior to their own, then it becomes more difficult for them to acquire the (R). It is my guess that they are going through the registration process, and are trying to smooth the way as much as possible.
Ignore them if you want, change it if you want. Legally, you're safe. Again, IANAL, so my advice is legally worthless.
Most writers regard truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are most economical in its use - Mark Twain
Sadly you're probably in the wrong.
I think that the courts have ruled incorrectly on metatagging, but there's not a lot we can do about stupid judges.
May we never see th
They are no longer claiming trademark infringement. They are claiming trademark confusion and dilloution(sp). It's the exact same thing that Microsoft(tm) is doing with Lindows. They aren't really saying Lindows is infringing on the Microsoft Windows(tm) trademark but rather that they are creating brand confusion.
So even though FFR might not actually be infringing on the HardRadio(tm) trademark, they might still be ruled against because they are creating brand confusion. Asking questions to the lawyers as suggested wouldn't tie the lawyers. It would just show that he has no idea what he's doing.
Anthony Papillion
Advanced Data Concepts, Inc.
"Quality Custom Software and IT Services"
Many search engines (I think) treat commas and spaces in meta keywords the same, as many sites are inconsistent in whether they use commas or spaces to delimit single words. Repeated words can actually hurt your ranking. So taking out "hard radio" may actually have a positive effect on your search ranking since those words appear elsewhere. It's very unlikely that they'd take action against you at that point.
I agree that they are acting like assholes though. Most infringers worth worrying about are a lot more blatant. The company I work for encountered a website with our company's name and the names of several competitors in a hidden list (white on white), with insults for each that would only show up in search results. We didn't take legal action, but we did email them and email a link the dozen or so of our competitors who were also infringed upon. Got a long winded apology and the list was removed.