While private companies can't violate the Constitution, a statute can. If the courts interpret trademark protections too broadly and end up gagging consumer complaints, then the trademark statutes would constrain freedom of speech. So far, at least, the courts aren't allowing things to go that far. But while consumers will likely win in court, these harassment lawsuits are effective in scaring away advocates who don't have the resources to defend themselves. Paul Alan Levy, an attorney at the public interest group Public Citizen who represented Virga, says these suits are an attempt to shut down consumer activism and keep the Internet from being used effectively to promote consumer awareness.
Experts describe meta tags as a kind of subject card catalog for the Internet.
They're words, hidden in code, that allow search engines to find and rank relevant Web sites. Had Virga been a competing pest control company, say, Orkin, and was using Terminix in her meta tags solely to trick potential customers into taking a look at a rival Web site, then Terminix might have a case. But Virga's Web site was not commercially connected in any way to pest control. Of course, that's precisely what these aggressive companies and their shark lawyers want. Steve Good, vice president of Terminix, said that earlier this month the company dropped its suit against Virga.