[jbolte1976]

THis is a scarey article... I just read about a case that went to court and a firm was actually found guilty of trademark infringments because they simply linked to a certain individuals online bio...

Check this out....

BlockShopper v. Jones Day: The right of Web sites to link. - By Wendy Davis - Slate Magazine


Jason

[Admin]

Hey Jason,

That's an interesting article, but by the way the trademark laws are now a day, BlockShopper was infringing on that firms trademark.

Lol I'm not saying it's right mind you, I'm simply saying it's the law.

The thing is, many people who try to set up and run an Internet business often don't know the law or adhere to it. Many marketers believe they can do whatever the heck they like. Linking is no different then if someone bought a domain that uses a trademark name in the actual domain as a keyword.

Here a while back - like a year or so, many big named companies went on the war path threatening to sue domain and site owners if they didn't either sell those domains to the actual companies, or take down the site, never to use the domain again.

The same can be said about using other people's copyrighted images. Right now, we are seeing this happen with content first hand. Remember you receiving those emails a while back about some articles that were copied regarding your Content Corner? Well, anchor text keyword links are rolling in a similar direction.

Like I said, I can see their viewpoint, but I don't agree with the way that firm handled the situation. I think they went over the line and drew a new standard.


Btwe, can you please start tagging your threads lol so the threads get listed in the serps under the right keywords and phrases?

[buffalo]

I think Jones Day needs some SEO lessons. Last I knew, natural backlinks were a GOOD thing.

I could see it from an invasion of privacy point of view, but disallowing the backlinks will have interesting SEO implications.

[aakay4u]

Hi i went through the article and am shocked that things could turn out like that.However,people should be more careful now in linking to the blogs of other people.Maybe in the eyes of law,it was right,but ethically it was just jumping over the line.Anyways things like this set new standards and people will think twice before linking to someone else's site.

[aryaman2008]

Well,it seems as if Jones Day was a novice in the field of internet laws.It's stated clearly on many websites in their privacy policies that doing such an act would amount to an offence.Still this case will act as an eye-opener to many people who just jump upon without carefully understanding and going through the policies.

[xombicide]

Wow! I never realized that you could actually be sued for linking to someone's website!! I really think that it's a load of baloney though. What harm could it possibly do to anyone or anything? If anything, I would guess that it would bring more traffic to a specific site. Isn't that a good thing?

[TheoGio]

Copyright infringement is serious business. Application of such to online marketing can be tricky. Paremeters need to be established and addressed.