Newsletter
USING ANOTHER COMPANY NAME IN A WEB PAGE TITLE TAG VIOLATES FAIR TRADE LAW
The Fair Trade Commission (FTC) recently gave a decision in a case in which a company name or other mark, being generally known to relevant businesses or consumers, was used in the title tag of a web page by a person other than its owner. The FTC ruled that such use contravenes Article 24 of the Fair Trade Law (FTL). Explaining its decision, the FTC noted that web sites and web pages not only can provide information, but also can be used to publish advertisements or offer electronic trading services. The greater the number of times users access such a site or page, the greater the amount of advertising fees the site or page owner may receive, or the greater the number of opportunities there will be for users to decide to trade. When an Internet user uses a company name or other mark as a search string to conduct a search, a search engine will auto-matically list in its search results web page title tags which unlawfully include that company name or mark. On first seeing the name or mark expressed in the title tag of such a web site or page, a user may be misled into thinking that the web site is the site of the company well known to relevant businesses or consumers, and may therefore click to access the site or page. Such use of a name or mark manifestly exploits the commercial reputation built up by another company to increase the likelihood of a web page being listed in search results, and thus constitutes taking unfair advantage of the commercial reputation of another company to increase trad-ing opportunities, is detrimental to the orderly conduct of trade, and is a manifestly unfair act.