This, alleges Blood Diagnostics Inc., is a breach of its trade mark rights.
Meta tags are HTML coding that web sites can use to let search engines know what their sites contain. Meta tag abuse occurs where one site includes the names of its competitors in its meta tags to divert traffic to its own site. This can amount to trade mark infringement or, in the UK, a legal wrong known as passing off, where one business passes itself off as being associated with another.
Historically so many site operators have abused meta tags that some search engines, most notably Google, no longer pay attention to meta tags, relying instead on other parameters such as site popularity and the text on the page.
The development of keyword advertising – where advertisers sponsor particular search terms so that, for a fee, whenever that term is searched the advertiser's link will appear next to the search results – has also had an impact, focusing marketing, and legal, attention onto adverts rather than codes.
As a result there have been few meta tag lawsuits in recent years.
According to Law.com, the new lawsuit was filed after Blood Diagnostics discovered that search engines were listing Florida-based Health Coalition's web site in the top 10 of search results for Blood Diagnostics. A forensic examination of the rival distributor's site ensued, revealing that trade marked terms relating to Blood Diagnostics and four other biopharm companies were contained in the source code of the site.
The suit follows previous litigation between the two companies over the dismissal of two Health Coalition employees. The two men then set up their own business – Blood Diagnostics – and successfully sued for breach of contract, although an appeal over lawyer's fees is still ongoing.
The current suit seeks an injunction and damages. According to Law.com, Health Coalition is arguing that the case should be dismissed, as the offending meta tags have now been removed from the site.