By Sarah Left, 26 April 1999 17:27
NEWS A US appeals court has ruled that companies who use their rivals' trademarks in Web addresses or meta tags can be sued for trademark infringement. The ruling - which sets an important precedent - revolves around a Los Angeles software firm, Brookfield Communication which sued competitor West Coast Entertainment for using Brookfield's trademark, 'moviebuff', to attract traffic to its own site. The court ruled that Brookfield's trademark registration outranked West Coast's domain name registration, even though West Coast obtained the domain name legally. The ruling is binding in nine western US states. Brand protection online is already part of UK law, but according to solicitor George Gardiner of Tarlo Lyons, the interesting part of the case is the meta tags. The judgement prohibited West Coast Entertainment from using 'moviebuff' as a meta tag to attract traffic via search engines, but allowed them to use 'movie buff', because it is a common English phrase. "It looks like the difference is just a space, but that's a huge difference in searching terms," explained Gardiner. "Using that meta tag meant that they were infringing on Brookfield's trademark, because when you typed in moviebuff, you got West Coast instead." The next big question, said Gardiner, is what happens when a company like Brookfield sues a company in the UK. "It would be a major problem, because US federal trademark is not binding in the UK. You'd have a judge saying, we don't normally recognise your trademark, but this is a global marketplace." Gardiner concluded: "We'll need more judgements on the international aspect of this; it's by no means a clear resolution. There will have to be some international treaties about trading names and the Internet to superimpose over local laws."
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