eWhisper - 5:04 pm on Apr 8, 2003 (gmt 0)

This thread seems to be done, but having been involved in a lawsuit about keywords, and i'm NOT a lawyer, only a witness who did a lot of research being the webmaster of the site in question, I thought I'd add the major word that the courts have focued on in these types of lawsuits.

Intent.

If your intent is to profit on someone else's work, or trademarked term, then it's illegal.

If your intent is to give information about the trademarked term, or fair use of a term, then it's legal.

A site that doesn't make any money, can use all the trademarked terms in it's keywords that it wants to as it's not profiting, but spreading information. (if the information is defamatory, then they might lose the lawsuit, be ordered to remove their keywords, but I've never seen a monetary award, only the removal of keywords).

If a site is profiting from the keywords in question, especially if there is no reason for them to use them but to capatalize on someone else's work, then their may be a monetary reward involved.

In this case, because the words could be copywrited, but also describe the other company in question, the odds heavily favor that if it went into a courtroom (as these usually do because judges don't understand the net enough yet to dismiss the case without some additional expert testimony) it would later be dismissed.

Repeat, I'm not a lawyer, but I've seen a few of these types of cases.

eWhisper