{"id":3139,"date":"2008-12-08T07:50:52","date_gmt":"2008-12-08T13:50:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sequence-inc.com\/fraudfiles\/?p=3139"},"modified":"2013-03-24T09:13:38","modified_gmt":"2013-03-24T14:13:38","slug":"dozier-internet-law-on-illegal-use-of-a-competitors-name","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/dozier-internet-law-on-illegal-use-of-a-competitors-name\/","title":{"rendered":"Dozier Internet Law on Illegal Use of a Competitor’s Name"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday Dozier Internet Law<\/a>, experts in litigation related to intellectual property and protection of reputations online , published a list of common issues in the battle over using a competitor’s name<\/a> to get traffic to your website.<\/p>\n

This area of law is certainly contentious. I am sure there are lawyers who would argue with the advice given in this article by Dozier, but that does nothing to diminish what I see as the main point of their article: If you’re using a competitor’s name to bring traffic to your site, be careful<\/strong>. There are a ton of pitfalls, and you could quickly find yourself in court.<\/p>\n

Here’s a summary of the main issues raised. I’m not a lawyer, and I don’t play one on TV, so go to Dozier’s blog for more detail.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Product reviews – Be careful when you create a “product review” site that only gives negative reviews of the competitor, and positive reviews for you.<\/li>\n
  2. Comparative advertising – Even if you’ve made true statements about the competitor you’re comparing, it can still be troublesome because there can be a claim that you used that competitor’s name inordinately for SEO purposes.<\/li>\n
  3. Sucks sites – There are many believers that a site with a competitor’s name and the word “sucks” in the title is legal. Dozier says it’s not.<\/li>\n
  4. First sale doctrine – Once I buy a product, I can sell it however I want. But if I buy one of a competitor’s product, jack up the price, and pretend to be selling it just to get traffic on the competitor’s name, this is a problem.<\/li>\n
  5. Directories – It’s illegal for a directory to post your information strictly for capturing traffic from customers looking for you, and then selling that customer information to a competitor.<\/li>\n
  6. Keyword stuffing, also known as spamdexing – Using your competitor’s name over and over in a URL, in the meta data, associated with images, or in invisible colors can push you higher in search results. This is not okay.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Dozier promises to talk more about these issues, so be sure to check his site for those updates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Yesterday Dozier Internet Law, experts in litigation related to intellectual property and protection of reputations online , published a list of common issues in the battle over using a competitor’s name to get traffic to your website. This area of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[1211,1213,1212],"class_list":["post-3139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fraud-news-stories","tag-dozier-internet-law","tag-google-bomb","tag-john-dozier"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Z0e-OD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3139\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}