Have you ever heard of a \u201cmeta tag\u201d? You may not have if you are not a professional website developer. A meta tag is small piece of code in a website that can enable a search engine or web browser to identify a particular site. You cannot see a meta tag simply by looking at a website online. However, sometimes the meta tag can be used by competing businesses to try to gain an advantage over the other resulting in litigation. This happened in\u00a0Red Label Vacations Inc. v. 411 Travel Buys Limited, 2015 FC 19.<\/p>\n
The plaintiff, Red Label Vacations Inc. (\u201cRed Label\u201d) is a travel business that offers online travel deals through its website redtag.ca. Red Label had registered various trademarks related to its business.<\/p>\n
The defendant, 411 Travel Buys Limited (\u201c411 Travel\u201d) is a direct competitor to Red Label and also offers online travel deals through its website. However, to gain a competitive edge, it also used meta tags that consisted of Red Label\u2019s registered trademarks.<\/p>\n
When 411 Travel refused to remove those meta tags, Red Label brought an action and sued 411 Travel alleging copyright infringement, trademark infringement, and the torts of passing off and depreciation of goodwill.<\/p>\n
What did the court say? The court decided that there was no copyright infringement because there was little evidence of any sufficient degree of skill or judgment in creating these meta tags as required by case law or for the originality required in compiling data or other compilations.<\/p>\n
Red Label also alleged trademark infringement under the\u00a0Trademarks Act.\u00a0The court held that an infringement of another\u2019s trademark must have been \u201cused\u201d by the defendant in connection with wares or services. The term \u201cuse\u201d is defined by the\u00a0Trademarks Act. The court decided that there was no \u201cuse\u201d and therefore no infringement.<\/p>\n
OUR THOUGHTS<\/strong><\/p>\n This case is being appealed. However, as it sits now, the use of meta tags will not attract liability for copyright or trademark infringement. This case addressed important issues that in the past have received very little judicial consideration. It will be interesting to see if the American position \u2013 where liability may exist if a business uses a trademark of a competitor to gain an advantage and attract customers \u2013 will gain any ground here in Canada.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Have you ever heard of a \u201cmeta tag\u201d? You may not have if you are not a professional website developer. A meta tag is small piece of code in a website that can enable a search engine or web browser to identify a particular site. You cannot see a meta tag simply by looking at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":5196,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,35],"tags":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.zeilikmanlaw.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/Case-Summary.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeilikmanlaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2309"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeilikmanlaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeilikmanlaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeilikmanlaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeilikmanlaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2309"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeilikmanlaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2309\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5166,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeilikmanlaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2309\/revisions\/5166"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeilikmanlaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeilikmanlaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeilikmanlaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeilikmanlaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}