Another case of trademark claims based on meta tags

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Paul Levy" <plevy () citizen org>
Date: October 13, 2009 6:13:57 PM EDT
To: <dave () farber net>
Subject: Another case of trademark claims based on meta tags

Long Bow Group, which made a documentary about the student protests at
Tiananmen Square, is trying to survive a trademark lawsuit brought by
Ling Chai, one of the former student leaders at the protest.  She went
on to found a software company called Jenzabar here in the US, a fact
which is duly noted on one page of a large web site about the film
created by the film's makers.  The page about Jenzabar also contains
information about certain litigation in which the company has been
involved.  Having been created ten years ago, the page has keyword meta
tags that include the company's name.

Long Bow's reward was a lawsuit by Chai and her company for defamation
and trademark infringement.  The defamation claims were dismissed early
on, but Jenzabar has been pursuing extensive discovery to try to prove
that the use of a trademark in keyword meta tags infringes the mark --
even though Google stopped supporting keyword meta tags years ago.  As I
discuss on our Consumer Law and Policy Blog, though, the plaintiffs have
given every appearance of using the trademark claim as an excuse to try
to drive the documentary film makers into bankruptcy.

http://pubcit.typepad.com/clpblog/2009/10/jenzabar-joins-trademark-abusers-hall-of-shame.html


Consequently, we decided to take the case on to defend the
documentarists' free speech rights.  Many thanks to Rebecca Tushnet of
Georgetown Law School of calling this case to our attention before the
defendants went broke.




Paul Alan Levy
Public Citizen Litigation Group
1600 - 20th Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20009
(202) 588-1000
http://www.citizen.org/litigation




-------------------------------------------
Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now
RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com