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Use of Non-Competitor's Trademarks in Metadata |
Use of Trademarks in Metadata has been an equally confusing and difficult arena to wade through.
Recently, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin held on April 18 that absent some direct competition, trademark use in meta tags will not substantiate a finding of initial interest confusion in the source of trademarked goods sold on the site. Standard Process, Inc. v. Banks, [ED Wis, 2008].
With respect to the defendant's use of the plaintiff's trademark in its Web site meta tags, the court found no likelihood of confusion, and distinguished Promatek Industries Ltd. v. Equitrac Corp., 300 F3d 808 (7th Cir. 2002) on both the facts and the technological time period. Promatek held that it was an infringement for a company to use another company's mark in its meta tags to indicate that it serviced the mark holder's products when that company was also a competitor of the mark holder.
Even if search engines did use meta tags the same way they did in 2002, the cases were still distinguishable, the court said, because here, the defendant was not competing with Standard Process—he was merely reselling Standard Process products for a profit. |
