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Is it legal to use your competitors name in meta tags? In CPC advertising?

Submitted by eric shannon on April 14, 2008 - 3:34pm.
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Search engine watch is reporting a new ruling that would make it illegal to use hotjobs, careerbuilder, or your direct competitor's name in the meta tags of your job board.

The 11th Circuit Court of Georgia ruled the use of others' trademarks in meta tags infringes trademark laws, according to North American Medical Corp. v. Axiom Worldwide, Inc.

How this eventually gets applied across the country remains to be seen but it is the start of legal interpretation of search optimization.


This seems a little incompatible with the ruling that dismissed a lawsuit against Google for allowing companies to buy CPC advertising on competitor names.

Some interesting follow-up reading from Hitwise here:

Google has announced that it will allow non-trademark owners to bid on trademarked terms in the UK and Ireland from May 5th, thus bringing the British and Irish markets in line with the US and Canada. This announcement has sparked concern of a "trademark bloodbath", but how big an impact will it actually have? 

and fascinating data about brand searches here:

91.8% of brand searches ended up on the brand owners’ websites in the UK, compared to just 84.2% in the US.

Irked Ire (not verified) | April 20, 2008 - 3:38pm

Interesting - but, The 11th
Interesting - but, The 11th Circuit Court of Georgia can only rule in the United States. A web site outside of the US is not obligated to adhere to any other country's rules. America must get over the idea that they own the INTERNET world-wide. The U.S. doesn't own the Internet and while the U.S. Vice President runner up Dan Quayle may claim to have "invented the Internet", he didn't. The U.S. can rule within their own border, but those rules don't apply outside the U.S. owned areas on the map. The Internet is world-wide and not owned by any country, business, organization, church :) or group. The more the U.S. big-business and gov't try to control the Internet, the more people will take their online business outside the U.S - including americans.

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