Trademark Infringement issues for online websites

After Google's trademark legal issues last week, are we also under threat?

[Imaster]

One of my client who runs a worldwide hotel directory received a snail mail from a Canadian hotel stating:

snip

This reminds of something similar to what happened to Google [webmasterworld.com]. Are all the websites now supposed to maintain a trademark database and check every entry for any violation? I think this is a swift move by the trademark owners to make some quick bucks.

FYI I did a quick search on Google for the exact same hotel name and I found tons of hotel affiliate sites providing the same information. Now my guess is that each one of them may have received such a mail.

[edited by: engine at 6:13 pm (utc) on Oct. 29, 2003]
[edit reason] no e-mail snippets, thanks [/edit]

[bird]

Obviously, they would prefer that nobody ever learned about the existence of their hotel, so that they won't have to put up with those annoying paying guests anymore...

[Michael Anthony]

Yep - I've had similar mails from Google about finance trademarks. I've also come across someone bidding on my company name, but figured that it was too much bother to try and get them to stop it. Besides, it made me feel proud!

Slightly off topic, I've also had emails from Commission Junction merchants instructing me not to bid more than a certain figure for their brand name, which seems kinda weird if brand name keywords are banned?