The deceptive use of another company's trademark in these or similar ways can result in a successful trademark infringement lawsuit, leading to an award of financial damages and in some cases, attorney fees. But there are some instances when the use of another company's trademark is permitted in a meta tag. Meta tags do not affect the appearance of a website and are not visible when you look at a Web page, but they provide information regarding the content of the site. When a search engine finds a search term in a meta tag, it indexes the Web page and displays it in the search results. Most search engines have since been trained to largely ignore these repetitions.
Some websites use meta tags in a deceptive manner to lure Web surfers.
Instead of using terms that properly describe the site, some programmers substitute the names of competing companies. One company went so far as to copy and use all of the meta tags at a rival site. This kind of deceptive use of another company's trademark in a meta tag is a form of trademark infringement when it confuses consumers. One judge described the practice as similar to a shop owner posting a sign with another company's trademark in front of its shop. He emails the site and Bigcomputers responds that it doesn't sell IBMs, but it has many equivalent machines at discounted prices.