Trademark Question

[ccb056]

I own and operate my own website. I have an uncle that owns and operates a carpet cleaning company. Let's call this company ChemDry. ChemDry has several competitors, such as MagnaDry. If I link to my uncle's ChemDry website using the anchor text MagnaDry, can MagnaDry sue me or my uncle? Both the names MagnaDry and ChemDry are trademarked/copyrighted by two different corperations.

[greg]

well. there are really two answers here.

#1.. As long as you are careful and they can not prove that the sites where the anchor links are places is some how affiliated with your uncles site, then no technically it would be hard to sue him. It is fairly easy to set up a domain and have it untraceable.

#2 it would not be all that ethical however. while for what it is worth internet marketing is not the most ethical type of marketing on the planet, it will crush your uncle's business if word got out about it. Even if they can not prove he had anything to do with the anchor links, everyone will believe he did it and the reputation in that industry, or assuming they are both offline companies as well in which case the town should he go to the paper or something, would be ruined. In all honesty the more enemies you make the harder life gets a lot of time.

So that being said I wouldn't do that. You can get away with it, and internet laws are so fuzzy there is a good chance you could even get caught and still nothing happen. But you are really compromising the reputation there.

[imaginemn]

It really depends on the name and if it's really a trademark. For example and excuse me for using my name but in this particular example it makes sense.

My company name is trademarked as "Imagine Creative Services". If someone uses the name I have the legal right to go after them. If someone uses "Imagine Creative" or "Creative Services" then I don't because they are too generic of terms to be used or actually be allowed to be trademarked. Anyone can add a "TM" or "(r)" to anything, especially online. I would check with the National Registry to see if they actually are legal trademarks.

If you are selling a service or product with a trademark make sure you post their trademark information. If you are just putting competitors names just for the sake of being listed when they type their name online then it's definitely an ethical issue like Greg mentioned in his post. Potential customers would probably be upset if they were trying to go to site A and actually went to site B. I know I would and I would and would never buy from you. But that's just me. It's overall bad business practice.