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Subject:Re: Meta tag legalities From:"Jeanne A. E. DeVoto" <jaed -at- BEST -dot- COM> Date:Thu, 19 Mar 1998 05:58:42 -0800
At 6:11 PM -0800 3/18/98, Sonja Draeger wrote:
>There's a discussion going round the office about the legality of putting
>competitors' names in meta tags on web sites. (We don't, by the way!) Does
>anyone know if this is legal or not? (I suspect not.)
There's no specific law concerning it. Trademark might possibly be
implicated, if doing this has the purpose and effect of causing consumer
confusion between competing companies. I do not know of any existing case
law on this question.
However, this is the sort of thing that can get a site blacklisted from
reputable search engines, which strikes me as an adequate reason in itself
to avoid the practice.
--
jeanne a. e. devoto ~ jaed -at- best -dot- com http://www.best.com/~jaed/
Morning people may be respected, but night people are feared.
