Finally, precedent – even if it’s moot. A judge ruled last week that using competitors’ words in meta-tags was a no-no.
As if it mattered anymore – but hey, it’s the principle of the thing. And Venture Tape Corp just made a cool half a mil on the principle of the thing. Google doesn’t care about meta tags anymore; but now, suddenly, the courts do.
McGill’s Glass Warehouse used Venture Tape’s keywords, tricked out in white on white text in their meta-tags in an attempt to ‘steal’ traffic from the rival company. I guess their SEO didn’t realize that duh, that don’t work anymore, sugar!
Instead of Venture Tape’s traffic, they got Venture Tape’s bill for $426,487 in lawyer fees for the five years of litigation it took to get the ruling against McGill.
Again, the amazing thing is that the judges and lawyers are finally getting savvy enough to even handle cases like this. There have been cases in the past where all the SEO talk seemed to go right over the heads of all the legal parties involved, making it difficult to move forward.
This time, however, the judge was on the ball. The ruling was in favor of Venture, citing that using trademark keywords in meta-tags counts as a use in commerce. McGill fulfilled seven of eight conditions for satisfying infringement – and the eighth being actual consumer confusion.
Pathetic really – all that subterfuge, and it was really hopeless in the first place. Shame to go to all the trouble of being devious and completely miss the mark – and you get spanked for it anyway.
Why did they, in the first place? Well, wayyyy back when, meta-tags actually had a lot to do with ranking and stuff like that – we’re talking pre PageRank, okay? – anyway, metatags were supposed to be extremely important, so stuffing them with competing keywords was the black hat flavor of the month.
Not any more. Meta-tags stopped carrying so much weight ages ago, and the fact that this is just now coming to a head is slightly laughable. Still it sets a good precedent, and bodes well for website owners who before now have often been forced to watch their hard worked for profits diverted to another source.
Perhaps some good will come of a half a million reasons NOT to steal your competitors trademark, after all!