I have had a usual solicitor letter which essential says not to use their brand name (it is a make of van) on any of my webpages, or in the metatags. This is in the UK Does their tradmark cover metatags and URL?
As late as 2006 it has been ruled in the US to be trademark infringement (Tdata v. Aircraft Technical Publishers). Which I find silly. 1) Metatags are hardly used by search engines. 2) US courts have found that it is not illegal to use other's trademarks to trigger Google ads. That seems to contradict that. As for your question, in the UK: Here is a case where it was initially determined to be infringement and then over-turned in the court of appeals. I can't say that is the defining case, but it is what I found so far.
Thank you so much for answering this post. I normally know the outcome of something before it happens, but in thais case, not a clue. I spend most of the day researching the matter and speaking to a few judges sadly none of which even knew what a metatag is. I decided to tell the to stick it up their **** In my humble opinion this is what should happen. If nike put adidas in their metags url and subdomains that would be an infringement. If a sports shop did so, whom sells that product, and it an accurate description of what they do, then so be it. That is legal. As such I have just told a major player to shove it. Words of madness perphaps? Really could use a message from someone whom has faced this before Valley
OK I reader this thread with interest, but can we be 100% sure, that this is true(we can use trademark in metatags) Also, does it mean you can use trademark in title, body, anchor text in link, and also in video description(I mean video that we upload in youtube, myspace, and many similar sites).I've seen most of them, but not sure.(in this case I don't mean use it in domain mane, which probably is infringment).
This is kinda new ground in the UK. There was a haulage firm that was using rivals metatags, and lost the court case. I am convinced my use is legal since I am actually offering the trademarked product for sale. How the hell can the expect me to stop using the phrase It is amake of van for heavens sake. Perphaps I could run a competition what to call it instead? Russian Ricksaw? Moscow Mule Stalins Stinker? This could backfire on them bigstyle. It is a hell of a lot easier for me to generate negative, funny spin then them to labour in a competitive market and create the opposite.