The warning comes from commercial law firm, Taylors, who successfully helped a leading Lancashire-based lighting manufacturer win a legal battle against their competitor who had unlawfully placed meta tags on their website so that customers searching for their rival’s products would be directed instead to their own. Further investigations by intellectual property lawyers at Taylors also revealed that the website contained 15 meta tags for other rivals’ sites.
Elaine Hurn, managing partner at Taylors said: "Some unscrupulous companies have been including meta tags giving the names of their competitors so that when the competitor's name is searched for, their own website shows up. Others have been less subtle and made overt references on their own site to their competitors in order to achieve the same goal. The unauthorised use of a registered trademark hidden in invisible programming of a site infringes the Trade Marks Act 1994 and use of an unregistered mark is passing off. Companies infringing this Act or passing themselves off as a rival will not only have to remove references to its competitor from its website, but could be hit by hefty damages claims and legal costs. Unfortunately, this is a common problem for companies trading on the web. Businesses wanting to trade through the Internet should check up from time to time by visiting their own site on line to check how the search engine directs them."
(Ruth Rossington)
