Sarah Bird, Esquire Latest search engine news blog articles from Sarah Bird, Esquire. http://www.seocentro.com/seo-archives/author/Sarah+Bird%2C+Esquire.html Sarah Bird, Esquire News Archive http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=13138 Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, The Washington State Attorney General announced in a press release yesterday that it was suing a Redmond-based SEO company, Visible.net. According to the Complaint, Visible also does business under the name WebMarketingSource.com, Caputures.com, and Captures.com (that's not a typo). The AG also names the owner of the companies, Gilbert Walker, as a defendant in the case. The defendants sell website design, SEO, Search Engines News SEO News Sarah Bird, Esquire Sarah Bird, Esquire Fri, 14 Nov 2008 18:46:36 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=12989 Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, A Jury awarded 4.8 million USD to NetQuote after finding that its competitor, MostChoice , submitted more than 3,500 false applications for insurance quotes to the NetQuote website. The jury was so disgusted with MostChoice that it actually awarded double the punitive damages that NetQuote asked for in the lawsuit. Getting punitive damages is unusual; Getting double what you asked for is extremely rare. Search Engines News SEO News Sarah Bird, Esquire Sarah Bird, Esquire Mon, 10 Nov 2008 21:43:04 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=12779 Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, I sincerely hope no one reading this ever needs this information. However, I have been asked privately for advice on this topic by industry folks so I thought I'd write a quick post on the topic. If you have a site that includes user-generated content, you may one day receive a subpoena asking you for personally identifying information about your users. Search Engines News SEO News Sarah Bird, Esquire Sarah Bird, Esquire Tue, 04 Nov 2008 01:06:16 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=12515 Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, Parker vs. Yahoo!, Microsoft, 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 74512 (E.D. Pa. Sep. 26, 2008) A federal court recently ruled that a lawsuit against Yahoo! and Microsoft for displaying cached versions of websites after the website owner has complained can go forward. Some of you may be experiencing a tingling feeling of deja vu. That's because the same plaintiff who brought this lawsuit against Yahoo! Search Engines News SEO News Sarah Bird, Esquire Sarah Bird, Esquire Tue, 28 Oct 2008 02:16:21 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=12036 Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, Those of you who get paid to build links aren't going to believe this one. One of the world's largest law firms, Jones Day , actually filed suit against a small e-commerce company, BlockShopper , for linking to it with the anchor text "Jones Day." Yes. I'm telling you the truth. The weird thing is BlockShopper's site wasn't defamatory, negative, or competing for services. Still, Search Engines News SEO News Sarah Bird, Esquire Sarah Bird, Esquire Tue, 14 Oct 2008 05:59:12 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=11561 Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, Attention everyone who co-blogs! If you create a blog collaboratively with another person, you may be wondering whether your fellow blogger could get you into legal trouble. We've known for years that website operators cannot be held responsible for their users' content thanks to the broad immunities created by section 230 of the CDA. That's old news. What's still unclear, however, Search Engines News SEO News Sarah Bird, Esquire Sarah Bird, Esquire Tue, 30 Sep 2008 16:23:04 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=11273 Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, Today I'm discussing a case involving alleged trademark infringement and meta tags. It's very dangerous to outrank your competitor, especially if that competitor has limitless pockets and very generic registered trademarks. U-Haul and eMove, Inc. vs Michael Glanz and HireAHelper, Inc. United States District Court of Arizona, 2-08-cv-01271 The Parties U-Haul owns eMove.com , Search Engines News SEO News Sarah Bird, Esquire Sarah Bird, Esquire Tue, 23 Sep 2008 08:46:08 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=10752 Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, I am often asked, "Can I talk about my competitor on my website?" To answer this question, I thought I would do a quick post about comparative advertising. The Federal Trade Commission promotes lawful comparative advertising as a great way to inform consumers and increase competition. Search Engines News SEO News Sarah Bird, Esquire Sarah Bird, Esquire Tue, 09 Sep 2008 07:07:33 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=10240 Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, In November 2007 I blogged about a wacky lawsuit involving the movie/book/TV phenomena called "The Secret" and an SEO, Dan Hollings. Several months have gone by and both parties have been busy. Background Summary The Secret (and all the international conglomerations and people that have a finger in ownership of The Secret ) sued Hollings for trademark infringement and violations of his alleged duty of loyalty. Search Engines News SEO News Sarah Bird, Esquire Sarah Bird, Esquire Mon, 25 Aug 2008 19:52:45 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=9970 Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, I have an update on the Jason Gambert Saga. For those of you wanting a refresher, please see my first post on the internet marketer trying to trademark "SEO" and my first update. When I last I provided an update, Gambert had filed 41-page response to SEOmoz's opposition proceeding and requested that all further legal proceedings be kept secret from the public. Search Engines News SEO News Sarah Bird, Esquire Sarah Bird, Esquire Tue, 19 Aug 2008 01:41:55 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=9732 Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, I'm continuing my series on important contract clauses for Legal Monday. I'm looking at Limitation of Liability provisions today. A Limitation of Liability clause places a cap on the amount of money an unsatisfied client could win in Court. It is a very powerful tool to limit your risk. Important Note : Never use disclaimers of warranties, indemnifications, or limitations of liability as excuses to do bad work. Search Engines News SEO News Sarah Bird, Esquire Sarah Bird, Esquire Mon, 11 Aug 2008 21:39:38 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=9462 Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, Continuing my mini-series on SEO/M contract clauses, today's Legal Monday focuses on indemnification clauses . These kinds of provisions are standard in many consulting contracts. They can be extremely valuable or extremely dangerous in your contract. Therefore, it is very important to understand and use them intelligently. Even if you don't want to delve into indemnifications in your contracts, remember that larger, Search Engines News SEO News Sarah Bird, Esquire Sarah Bird, Esquire Mon, 04 Aug 2008 21:06:49 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=9192 Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, Last week, many of you requested more posts on common contract clauses. Your wish is my command: Today, I'm very briefly going to review "opportunity to cure" provisions. This provision is valuable for any one providing a SEO/M consulting services. Why do I need to include an "opportunity to cure" provision in my consulting contracts? Unfortunately, Search Engines News SEO News Sarah Bird, Esquire Sarah Bird, Esquire Mon, 28 Jul 2008 22:11:18 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=8912 Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, Today's Legal Monday is brief (for a change!), but very important for anyone doing SEO consulting. When selling their products, consultants tend to use overstate their abilities and over promise on deliverables. It is important to resist this temptation and communicate as effectively and honestly with clients as possible. A certain amount of over-selling is expected and there is even a legal word for it, "puffery. Search Engines News SEO News Sarah Bird, Esquire Sarah Bird, Esquire Mon, 21 Jul 2008 17:19:24 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=8599 Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, I've had a few different people approach me in the last couple months because their sites have been removed by Google based on the filing of a DMCA Complaint. The notification in Google's webmaster tools looks something like this: In response to a complaint we received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed 1 result(s) from this page. If you wish, Search Engines News SEO News Sarah Bird, Esquire Sarah Bird, Esquire Mon, 14 Jul 2008 06:33:03 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=8112 Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, For Legal Monday, I'm going to spotlight a case dealing with SEO, affiliate marketing, commissions-based SEO, and the importance of having a clear, written contract. The Parties In this Utah case , Margae Inc. , an internet marketing company with an odd homepage, is suing Clear Link , another internet marketing company. Clear Link is a big fish providing and managing affiliate marketing services for some hot properties, Search Engines News SEO News Sarah Bird, Esquire Sarah Bird, Esquire Mon, 30 Jun 2008 18:23:37 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=7845 Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, DSW , a large shoe retailer, filed a federal trademark infringement case last month against Zappos.com and Commission Junction . Here's the background in brief: DSW has been operating DSWshoes.com since about 2000. The site includes information about its 200 plus brick-and-mortar stores, but does not offer direct, online shoe sales. Zappos sells shoes online. Over 840 million of them last year. Search Engines News SEO News Sarah Bird, Esquire Sarah Bird, Esquire Mon, 23 Jun 2008 21:24:30 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=7528 Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, I have some disconcerting news to report on today's Legal Monday. In a move that it will surely regret, the Associated Press (AP) declared war on the internet. Maybe that's a slight overstatement, but the AP will certainly rue the day it decided to adopt a policy of sending DMCA take-down notices to bloggers and social news aggregators. Last week, the AP sent seven DMCA take-down notices to The Drudge Retort, Search Engines News SEO News Sarah Bird, Esquire Sarah Bird, Esquire Mon, 16 Jun 2008 18:28:44 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=7043 Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, It's not Monday, but I hope it's worth the wait. Our European colleagues have been buzzing about a new law prohibiting certain stealth marketing tactics. Distilled , IPA , The BBC, BigMouthMedia , The Times Online and Marketing Week have speculated on the potential fallout of the new regulation. Many have predicted the demise of common, but controversial covert marketing techniques , including paid links, fake reviews, Search Engines News SEO News Sarah Bird, Esquire Sarah Bird, Esquire Wed, 04 Jun 2008 04:11:30 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=6718 Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, Happy De Facto Legal Monday! Little did I know what an exciting morning it would turn out to be! Definitely worth an update to the blog! Jason Gambert has delighted us with another literary and legal masterpiece in his misguided effort to trademark "SEO." Here's the brief refresher/update on the Gambert Saga: 1. In April, I discovered that Jason Gambert was trying to trademark the term "SEO. Search Engines News SEO News Sarah Bird, Esquire Sarah Bird, Esquire Tue, 27 May 2008 20:45:35 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=6367 Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, There has been a lot of buzz surrounding New York's new law requiring online retailers to collect sales tax from their New York Customers if they engage affiliate marketers in that state. The New York Times ( original coverage and the Overstock fallout ), the New York Post , Vastplanet , Cost Per News, and The Wired Blog represent a handful of the coverage out there. Search Engines News SEO News Sarah Bird, Esquire Sarah Bird, Esquire Mon, 19 May 2008 11:58:13 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=6098 Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, Today we're going to contrast two recent judicial opinions on the use of a competitor's trademark in meta-tags. Same issues; Different outcomes. Let's take a very brief look at each case. North American Medical Corp. v Axiom 2008 WL 918411 (11th Cir. April 7, 2008) The two companies involved in this suit make spinal decompression devices. Allegedly, Search Engines News SEO News Sarah Bird, Esquire Sarah Bird, Esquire Mon, 12 May 2008 23:18:14 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=5792 Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, Last week, there was minor uproar over a Florida District Court's Order involving negative keywords. Understandably, many SEO/Ms were anxious that the Court screwed something up that would prevent companies from bidding on their competitors' trademarks for keyword advertising. Ars Technica ran the headline "'Negative Keyword' Ruling May Have Big Impact On search Ads. Search Engines News SEO News Sarah Bird, Esquire Sarah Bird, Esquire Mon, 05 May 2008 22:49:29 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=5428 Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please The Mozzers, Pssst. I've got a secret. It involves the hokey pop culture phenomenon, The Secret, and the controversial SEM, Dan Hollings. Okay. I lied. It's not a secret. In fact, the whole nasty mess is public record because the owners of The Secret are suing their former internet marketer for trademark infringement and violating his duty of loyalty to them. The case, TS Merchandising v. Hollings , Search Engines News SEO News Sarah Bird, Esquire Sarah Bird, Esquire Mon, 28 Apr 2008 12:49:16 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=5180 Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, Last Friday, I had the pleasure of attending the Law and Business of Online Advertising, a conference co-sponsored by the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology and University of Santa Claras High Tech Law Institute . It was a Who's Who of online marketing super stars, including Eric Goldman (my hero), Kim Howell (poor thing had to explain online marketing to liberal, non-technology academics), Search Engines News SEO News Sarah Bird, Esquire Sarah Bird, Esquire Tue, 22 Apr 2008 08:14:29 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=4815 Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, According to Google, its Adsense program for domains "allows domain name registrars and large domain name holders to unlock the value in their parked page inventory." After a ruling by the Northern District of Illinois a few weeks ago, Adsense may also allow plaintiffs' attorneys to unlock Google's value. Or, if that is ungenerous, Search Engines News SEO News Sarah Bird, Esquire Sarah Bird, Esquire Mon, 14 Apr 2008 19:08:13 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=4497 Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, I was working on trademarking some SEOmoz marks the other day, when I noticed that someone is trying to register "SEO" as a service mark. I was shocked. Apparently, the guy who's doing this has managaged to get all the way to the publication stage of the registration process. That means he has passed the preliminary review by the Trademark Office's ("TMO") reviewing attorney. Currently, Search Engines News SEO News Sarah Bird, Esquire Sarah Bird, Esquire Mon, 07 Apr 2008 22:08:50 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=4204 Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, Welcome to Legal Monday! (It's still Monday, right?) My goal is to present a checklist of legal issues and trends surrounding affiliate marketing. I hope this will be interesting to both merchants and marketers. Affiliate marketing has unfortunately gained a bad reputation for being particularly high risk. While the industry is unlikely to ever be risk-free, Search Engines News SEO News Sarah Bird, Esquire Sarah Bird, Esquire Tue, 01 Apr 2008 01:21:12 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=3843 Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, Legal Monday is here again. This week's post is part practical guide and part cybernag. Remember the post I wrote encouraging you to register your copyright back in December 2007? I bet you haven't done it yet. Am I right? I thought so. Today, I'm breaking down the registration process even further by providing some sample registration forms and discussing strategies for how to register your content. Search Engines News SEO News Sarah Bird, Esquire Sarah Bird, Esquire Mon, 24 Mar 2008 22:28:29 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=3524 Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, We're keeping Legal Monday short and sweet to bring you this breaking news. As many of you know, Valueclick and its subsidiaries, Hi-Speed Media and E-Babylon, have been under investigation by the Federal Trade Commission ("FTC") for alleged violations of the Can-Spam Act and failure to protect consumer's sensitive information. Search Engines News SEO News Sarah Bird, Esquire Sarah Bird, Esquire Mon, 17 Mar 2008 19:16:19 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=3140 Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, Happy Legal Monday! Fuel up on that caffeine because today I want to discuss how trademark law plays out in the course of a domain name dispute. We're going to compare and contract the Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act with I-CANN's Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy. As I see it, there are generally three kinds of domain name disputes. Search Engines News SEO News Sarah Bird, Esquire Sarah Bird, Esquire Mon, 10 Mar 2008 07:11:13 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=2734 Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, Welcome to another edition of Legal Mondays! Im very pleased to be back in town with all systems go. Before I left for vacation in February, we were looking at trademark law basics . Today, were building on the basics and moving into problem sets. Today's topic is How screwed am I? Another business has the same name as mine. Search Engines News SEO News Sarah Bird, Esquire Sarah Bird, Esquire Mon, 03 Mar 2008 14:53:28 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=996 Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May it Please the Mozzers, I had the pleasure of attending Law Seminars Internationals 16th Annual Seattle Conference on New Development in Technology Law last week. The place was chock full of brilliant legal minds and even a handful of techies. I want to spotlight one presentation in particular today. David Bateman , of K&L Gates spoke on policing bad behavior on the internet. (He had such a peppy, Search Engines News SEO News Sarah Bird, Esquire Sarah Bird, Esquire Mon, 17 Dec 2007 21:05:13 GMT