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The Use Of Trademarks To Trigger Internet Advertising

By Jason D. Sanders
March 30, 2006

On Feb. 7, 2006, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a judgment of trademark infringement in favor of manufacturers of tanning lotions against several unauthorized distributors. The defendants had paid for preferential search engine listings when computer users searched for plaintiffs' trademarks and has also placed plaintiffs' trademarks in the metatags of their Web sites (metatags are internal Web site coding often used by search engines to identify the content of Web sites). Australian Gold, Inc. v. Hatfield, 436 F.3d 1228 (10th Cir. 2006).

Without separately addressing the different potential bases of liability, the court reasoned that overall, defendants had violated the Lanham Act by using 'the goodwill associated with Plaintiffs' trademarks in such a way that consumers might be lured' to their products, instead of going to authorized sellers. Id. at 1239.

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