Cease and Desist

[CHR]

One webmaster is ranting about receiving a 'Cease & Desist' letter from Norfolk Florist claiming his OG client's doorway page for the city violates their trademark.

seoslap.com/index.php/florist-norfolk-flower-shops-norfolk-virginia/ (cut and paste the URL - I didn't want to make it clickable so he'd follow the link back to FC)

Regardless of how they got their city name trademarked, they did, which means my client has to remove that exact phrase from their pages. When I tried to remove it, I found that it actually was not even on the page. This really got to me because they must be sending these threatening letters out to all flower shops that operate on a national level in hopes that they may catch someone that is using their “name”.

I too am surprised that the USPTO granted the trademark but it is kinda funny that this OG feels entitled to tell consumers they 'deliver to' Norfolk or anywhere else.

Someone dugg his article here: http://digg.com/business_finance/Norfolk_Va_Florist_Shady_Internet_Marketing_Practices and called Norfolk Florist 'shady'. :rofl: I just had to throw in a comment. Sheesh

 

[Bigted]

There was a similar story about some guy trademarking the names to every new neighborhood in South Orange County, and then trying to exthort money for people using the name. It doesn't work, but the idiots will try anything.

 

[BamaE4U]

Added my .02

to the DIGG.

Also invited Norfolk to FC.

 

[RJD]

In a related story:

Utah bans keyword advertising on trademarked terms

In March, the state of Utah passed the Trademark Protection Act, designed to protect companies that register their trademarks in Utah.

Essentially, the law creates a database of trademarked terms, and prevents online advertisers from using those terms as keywords. In other words, if you're Mazda, you can't buy paid advertisements from Google that will show up when users search for Pontiac.

While some bloggers have declared that the bill shows an inherent misunderstanding of how the web works (every company that ever buys keyword advertising will have to check with Utah's state registry to make sure the term isn't trademarked in that state), it's amusing that the Utah lawmakers behind the bill have taken to the blogosphere to defend the law.

http://feeds.downloadsquad.com/~r/weblogsinc/downloadsquad/~3/108079426/