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"Pez" Forbidden in Meta Tags

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the what-does-this-mean dept.

Ex Machina writes "According to the legal jargon on Pez.com: "You may not embed Metatags (hidden text used by web search engines to find websites) into your website using any of the registered or unregistered trademarks of Pez Candy, Inc. or its affiliates, in particular the PEZ® mark. Any such use of Metatags will be considered trademark infringement and will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. " Is there a precident for this case? I do believe this would fall under fair use--- for example, product reviews could be blocked if this was legitimized by a court. I fear lawyers. "

1 of 178 comments (clear)

  1. Lawyers - a sign that you're late to the web. by Bob-K · · Score: 5

    When I first got involved with the web, it was with a news-like organization. We produced some material, it was legitimately copyrighted. And we felt the impulse to ensure that nobody stole it and used it on their web site.

    Of course, this was impossible, right or wrong. And no matter how many lawyers we had, and even if they worked for free (one did), there was simply no way to efficiently eliminate all traces of copyright violation. There are too many millions of people with the ability to copy something, and it took too much effort to even warn them about copyright violation.

    Yes, copyright and trademark still exist on the web; nobody can effectively copy your site wholesale, nobody can get away with selling phony products under your name for very long, nobody can use your trademarks to direct people to their own site. Those sorts of major violations are easy enough to counter, just as they have always been. But when you talk about a zillion little violations... like fans using your name in their metatags... let it go. You can't win. All you'll accomplish is to piss off your loyal customers.

    That said, I understand the need for these disclaimers; if they were actually chasing down minor violators, that would be quite annoying. A better idea is to protect a trademark by specifically allowing it to be used in certain ways, and having the lawyers chase down only the worst abusers.

    The web works under a sort of de facto copyright law: if it can be done below the radar of the lawyers, then you might as well condone it, because you can't stop it.