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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?
Get you page slashdotted -> problem solved
Why is anything anything?
Step One. Seek professional legal advice.
Step Two. Disregard all advice that you might get on slashdot, with the exception of the people who tell you to:
Step Three. Seek professional legal advice.
"It's not hard, Radio is easy to use."
If you are one in a million, then there are six thousand people who are just like you.
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.
This should be pretty easy to fight. The company HardRadio(tm) doesn't own trademarks on the words "hard" or "radio", but on the single term "hardradio". Alternatively, would they drop the suit if you changed your metadata to "radio hard"?
Having said that, I didn't say it'd be quick or inexpensive to fight. :-)
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
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.
Donald Trump said in his first book, The Art of the Deal, that if you don't stand and fight when someone wrongs you, you will be seen as weak, and the vultures will have no problems trying to screw you over and over again. I firmly believe that -- and, hey, a guy worth billions is worth listening to, IMHO.
Ask for proof that they have registered "hard radio" in addition to the one-word bumpycaps "HardRadio". Ask for proof that in addition to "HardRadio" they registered "hardradio". Ask if they are claiming the words "hard" and "radio" individually. Ask if they are claiming "radio hard". Use your imagination.
Ever heard of a brand called Asprin? They didn't protect their trademark, now it's generic and they've lost it. When I used to read Writer's Digest, I saw ads from Chrysler (who owns Jeep) specifying that Jeep was a vehicle made by a specific company, and asked (paraphrased), "When you're writing, remember, it's not a Jeep unless it's made by Jeep." (As opposed to calling a Suziki Samuri a jeep -- small j.)
Companies have to do this. They have to prove they are aggressively defending their trademark, or they could lose it. That's happend with a number of companies. Another example -- Xerox. In many offices people say, "Please xerox this." (Note small X at start of word). This could lead to xerox, as a word, meaning to make a copy. If it continues, Xerox would lose the trademark for their name, which could hurt them. After they've spent years and millions building up brand recognition, if the name is considered generic, any company could come in and capitalize on the benefit of the name.
Contrary to what some people are saying, this does not mean a company has a big ego -- they're just doing what they need to do, and it is even possible it is automated so there may not be any human even aware of your situation.
You could just change the tags, which would be easiest, or you could even write a response, explain that you are using the two words (instead of one combined word), and you might even ask if you could have permission to continue to use these words in this fashion.
I know it's frustrating, makes you feel violated, and seems pigheaded, but they're just doing what they have to in order to protect their investment. Don't blame them.
Did you read the letter he sent to them? For one thing, using the phrase, "Fight For Rock isn't even a pimple on your ass" isn't exactly the best way to present yourself as a respectful person interested in calm negotiation.
Also, I found this comment funny, "So I've decided to contact some legal experts and do some research so I can know exactly what my rights are." All right! I've always wanted to be a legal expert.
There are several other glaring grammatical issues in there too. I find this one of the worst things he could have done. Why in the world would you fire off an angry, inflammatory letter to them and then seek legal advice?
We may experience some slight turbulence and then...explode. -Capt. Mal Reynolds
The funny thing about trademark law is that you can loose your trademark if you don't send out threatening letters like our FightForRock admin got. Combine this with a company that has a trademark that is very close to a generic term (and generic terms are not trademarkable) and you get a legal department that is pretty much forced to by hyper-paranoid about trademarks. This leads to a sort of little-big-man syndrome, where the company acts like it thinks everyone is picking on it. So HardRadio has a chip on it's shoulder. FightForRock accidentally stepped on their shoes, and now HardRadio has been forced into a legal pissing contest. What do you do when the short guy gets all pissy at you for no good reason? You can either kick his scrawny ass (which is usually more trouble than it's worth) or you can smile and apologise for whatever minor thing set him off and be on your way. Those are pretty much FightForRock's options. I don't see that HardRadio really has a case, but it's probably more trouble than it's worth to kick their asses in court. ------- P.S. This post was designed specifically to propogate negative stereotypes about short people. Tall Power!
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.
Another idea is to get this story on as many blogs as possible. That way searches for "hard radio" pull up the story of some lawyer beating up on a "public access", not for profit, little-guy website.
Paybacks....
Of course, I'm not sure how you pull this kind of attention back when hardradio.com lawyers back off.... Well they did bring it on themselves.