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Trademarks lawyers and meta data

Sep 13, 2013 - Posted by Brian-H in Branding / Brand Awareness and Legal | 14 Responses | 1018 Views
  • Hi,

    Our online ecommerce company is an authorised reseller of some branded goods.

    Recently we started to get legal emails from the Brands parent company saying...

    You are using XYZ trademark(s) as a meta tag, keyword, or other visible or concealed text in connection with your website located at By doing so, you intentionally seek to attract Internet users to your website. This unauthorized use of XYZ Plc ’s intellectual property falsely suggests XYZ Plc ’s sponsorship or endorsement of your website. This practice infringes on XYZ Plc’s exclusive intellectual property rights.

    We request you immediately remove all XYZ Plc trademarks from meta tags, keywords, and other visible or concealed text that are connected to your website located at: url

    To be clear we don't hide any meta text or anything else (apart from within tabs or accordians) and everything we have done has just been to inform our clients that they are buying a certain brand. We are a authorised reseller of the UK agent but the UK agent doesn't want to get involved and advised us to remove all references to the brand on the url.

    It seems logical to me that this falls under "fair use" of the trademark to describe accurately the product they are buying. I was wondering if anyone else has had a similar experience and what the outcome was?

    I do have to say we don't with the registered symbol after their brand name nor do we say that the brand name is registered to XYZ...we could but the page would be ugly and if every brand did this on every site the web would be a mess.

    For the moment I have emailed them saying we are confused by their email and asking for a conversation.

  • 543683

      Logical and legal aren't always the same thing, however, if the two legal teams have already discussed this, then there is really nothing else for you to do. Granted, I would assume you would be able to use keywords if you're a brand reseller, but who knows? If they drew their agreement up in some way that doesn't allow it (which is probably what happened) then there's not a lot you can do and certainly not a lot you can do without spending some money.

      Sure, it never hurts to get a second opinion, but it just seems like you're in a pretty big uphill fight with no support. That being said, if you do want to pursue it, contact a lawyer asap. They are a few step ahead of you right now, and you need to catch up to even have a chance. 

      Good luck!


    • Reply
    • ✓ Good Answer
    • Good Answer
    • B
      • Thanks Ruben,

        I am hoping that a brief chat with them will find out what it is that is causing the problem to them. If in fact they do want all references removed then we will seek legal advice.

        My understanding of trademarks is:

        Fair use may be asserted on two grounds, either that the alleged infringer is using the mark to describe accurately an aspect of its products (i.e. it is a product produced by said brand), or that the alleged infringer is using the mark to identify the mark owner.

        Now we are in the UK and that is US law but the principle is that you need to be able to adequately describe a product and it's origin and markings in order to accurately sell it. Trademark law was never intended to pressure certain shops from displaying items for legitimate sale.

      • Reply
      • 303841
        • Thats the road I would take in the first instance, nice and friendly contact, try to see what is bothering them and how you can fix it. Go the route of 'we are not trying to attract people to the site, simply properly naming the product we are selling'. When lawyers talk to web people confusion usually reigns. In some cases slapping a registered copyright symbol on all instances and having some sort of visible disclaimer about rights can work, but as others have said that depends on the company/contract and sometimes the guy you get on the phone, so keeping it friendly is good!

        • Reply
  • 478647
    • The first thing I would do is contact whoever is your contact at the company that authorizes you to sell the goods. I would let them know about the situation. More than likely if this is happening to you, they have had someone else complain about it to them and they know the best course to handle it. 

    • Reply
    • B
      • That´s what we did and they said unfortunately they cant help us and we would have to comply.

        Here is their reply:

        Management have got back to me with regards to this issue.

        They've spoken to our legal team and I'm afraid you will have to comply with
        XYZ requests.

        Whilst you are an authorised stockist of XYZ, we haven't given
        you (and can't give you) the right to use meta tags, and keywords and other
        concealed text that include XYZ trademarks.

        Unfortunately this is the only option I'm afraid.

      • Reply
      • 478647
        • Ok, now you have to look at things differently and ask yourself these questions. 

          1. Can you afford to lose your supply of the products?

          2 Do you still want to carry the products?

          If it were me personally, I would tell them to go pound sand. They cannot control what you use for meta tags or other meta data. I think they would have a hard time making any kind of case that would not be covered by fair use. 

          You could be sneaky, it is well documented that google will generate meta information for a site that does not have meta data. So in theory you could serve meta data to google's ip addresses and strip it from other requests. 

        • Reply
        • B
          • I think if you re-read their original request it was meta data + all other instances of their brand name on the page. We're not particularly bothered about the meta data as long as we can use it in the page title but I think they are requesting their brand name removed from all parts of the page.

          • Reply
  • J
    • Wait, you don't have any meta keywords tags? I find that hard to believe. Most sites these days do although I'm totally against them and think you should delete any of them anyway whether this letter scares you or not.

      A simple link would help us determine whether or not this is true...

      If you are an authorized retailer you should be able to use their brand name.. I would contact a lawyer though. They should be able to help you more than anybody here. (unless we have some lawyers hangin about)

      I had a slightly similar thing happen with a product name and the parent company. I work in-house for a cloud computing company and one of the programs we host has very strict stipulations about how we use their product's name in our PPC campaigns. Only in the PPC campaigns, though. Everywhere else we can do as we please. However, we are an "authorized hosting provider" through the developers, and these terms were agreed upon when we signed up for this. As an authorized retailer, you should technically have some paperwork/agreement as well which should be reviewed.

      Anyway, I would definitely contact a lawyer before going any further with this. Sorry I'm no help. But if it's as simple as removing meta keywords then just do that! They're useless anyway and if these guys truly think those meta keywords are helping you rank for their brand then... well they don't know what they're talking about.

    • Reply
    • B
      • Their use of meta keywords is just lawyer talk to cover all bases as they talk about all visible, concealed text or meta tags. It's like a lawyer saying in the US, World and Universe (which I have seen).

        Their name appears in the meta description once as it's their product brand page (where all their products are listed) and then appears 3 or 4 times in the body text. This isn't some thin affiliate site it's a real world ecommerce site but I also don't want to offend their lawyers by posting information that could identify them at this stage.

        Whether or not we use their brand name in our meta description surely that is unenforceable. They did this with PPC to us when we were running a campaign and I could see some merit in that so we removed it without talking to them but website copy remove their brand name when it's legitimately used...I think that may fall under fair use.

        I have posted this under areas Branding / Brand Awareness and Legal as I thought it may be a common problem.

      • Reply
      • J
        • Oh no I think it's a great question, don't get me wrong. I'm also curious as to how it will be resolved so please keep us posted.

          Perhaps you could ask their lawyers to specify exactly which usage of the brand they would like removed, highlighting the areas in the source code? Their use of the term "hidden text" makes me think it's meta keywords still... You're sure those don't exist?

        • Reply
        • B
          • Just in the meta description.

            Will keep it up to date. Have requested a phone conversion telling them that their email has me "scratching my head". 

          • Reply
          • J
            • Well heck if it's in the meta description and that's what they want gone then that shouldn't be too hard to do. So long as you can keep it in the page's title, you really shouldn't need it in the description. Meta descriptions don't affect SERP placement anyway.

              You could change it. Say if the product was Microsoft Office for sale you could have the description say "the popular business software suite" instead of the branded name, or something like that?

              Anyway good luck!

            • Reply
  • B
    • I said I would provide an update....

      I replied to them and haven't heard a peep since. I suspect that they scraped every instance of the mention of the brand online and emailed everyone without making any checks.

    • Reply
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