Hi guys….any comments on this will be appreciated. I was recently approached by a website owner that I am using his company name in my Meta description tag and this was a copyright infringement. I have changed the description but still not sure if this was an infringement. Because I was not saying that my website is a part of that company in anyway. It was like Website BankRate.com and having Bank Rate in Canada in description and keywords Jag
Is his business in the US? If it is, then what he is saying is wrong. In the US domain names and business names cannot be copyrighted. However, that doesn't mean there is no infringement going on. It would be trademark infringement, not copyright infringement. It would be hard to say even if we had the real information, but given your limited description it is even harder to determine. If the reality holds true to your example then there would be several things that could be a factor. One factor in your favor would be that bank and rate are generic terms (and even are related so they make sense together). If you had a loan related website it would make perfect sense to have those terms. One factor that would be against you is if BankRate.com was about a bank in Canada. In that case, your generic terms could be seen as being meant to reflect a specific business that might have a trademark. Another factor would be if there actually was a trademark (registered or not). In the US, something like Bank Rate (generic, descriptive) would only be eligible for trademark protection if the term had gained secondary meaning. This would mean that it was well known that the term meant that business. However, assuming that the term is trademarked, it is still not cut and dry. The courts in the US have been going back and fourth over whether this would constitute infringement. The last decision on the subject says that it is not copyright infringement for a business to use a competitor's trademarks in metatags for the purpose of search results or in the use of targetting consumers in contextual ads like AdWords. Of course, that only applies to the US and countries that have the same laws. Other countries have gone the opposite direction in court cases. Google lost a case in France around this issue, for example. They won a very similar case here in the US though. http://www.theiplawblog.com/archives/-trademark-law-settlement-in-keyword-trademark-dispute.html http://news.com.com/Google+loses+trademark+dispute+in+France/2100-1030_3-5543827.html http://news.com.com/2100-1030_3-6121483.html