The New York Law Publishing Company . All rights reserved. WITH MORE AND MORE companies establishing a Web presence, the Internet is at the very least spawning an ever-expanding body of cases that will keep practitioners and their clients wondering what new twists the litigation will take and how to avoid getting entangled in it. In the case at hand, Playboy Enterprises Inc. v. Calvin Designer Label, Civ. Even more interesting, Playboy also alleged that the defendants had violated its trademark rights by employing meta tags.
Search engines are tools that assist Internet users in finding useful information on the Internet.
However, search engines will also pick up HTML pages that contain code that, although not contained in the visible text of the HTML page, is embedded within the HTML page. Rather, meta tags often contain popular search terms that have little or nothing to do with the content of the relevant HTML page but are nevertheless inserted merely for purposes of luring Internet users to a particular Web site. Apparently, the defendants were using Playboy's frequently searched marks as part of their domain names, within the text of their Web pages and as meta tags for purposes of attracting Internet users to their Web sites. In response, Playboy brought an action against the defendants alleging trademark infringement and unfair competition based on false designation of origin and false representation. U.S. District Judge Charles A. Legge of San Francisco found that the plaintiff was likely to succeed in proving the merits of its claims and granted Playboy preliminary injunctive relief.