Rosetta Stone trademark infringement lawsuits

i'm curious about what they can do legally against a review site too. I thought review sites were all protected by freedom of speech.

how many others have been running successful ppc campaigns on yahoo under product/service terms? you're just suppose to make sure the term isn't in your ad right? What about the URL? If it's in the URL but not the actual "domain name" is that fine too?

Thanks in advance

How were those supposed "reviews" conducted?

If they were just some tables showing some arbitrary ranking to make the program THEY were promoting show up as apparently "better" than the others, well, that's just plain deceptive!

The value in a review of a language learning product would be a study of how long it took some reasonable sample of people to attain a given level of language proficiency by some point in time. Is that what those reviews purported to be?

Or were they just meaningless metrics dolled-up to "look good"?

Does anybody here think that some affiliates who promote Clickbank products are not beyond posting deceptive materials in order to make a few sales?

The trouble with the IM world is, it's every person for themselves. It's virtually impossible to police things very well.

I suppose the only thing surprizing about these lawsuits is that they happened at all! I can only imagine that the affiliates in question got greedy and left their deceptive sites up for way longer than they should have.

BTW, Google has been sued numerous times for the exact same reasons, and some of those suits are still pending. The courts have been asked to decide if Google is subject to Trademark violations by auctioning off ad placements that use 3rd-party trademarks to anybody who cares to bid on them. Their argument is, "Hey, we're not the police! If someone wants to violate another company's trademark rights, that's not our problem." I think at least one court came down against them, and they may have changed their tune a little bit regarding well-known tradmarks. But it would be impossible for them to verify that every ad is perfectly sanitized against trademark violations.

-David

Thanks for posting this thread.

This was an interesting read as I am in the throws of launching a web2.0 style review website to open up to the general public.

I've done some research on this case since seeing your thread. The review sites in question were crappy wordpress landing pages thrown up by affiliates - no TOS, privacy policies etc. Really a laugh.

Here's some updates on the case:

Rosetta Stone Ltd v. Rocket Languages Ltd et al - Boliven Legal Proceedings

Cheers

You know, this is RIDICULOUS! When will this ever stop? Rosetta Stone is techhnically NOT trademarkable! It is a name in COMMON USE! In FACT, it is in COMMON USE regarding LANGUAGE TRANSLATION!!!!!!!!! The THIRD real link in Google says it is a tablet that was created about 2200 years ago, and got the name the rosetta stone over 200 years ago! Rosetta Stone - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

If they REALLY wanted to prevent this, they should have come up with a REAL trademarkable term! HECK, when I was told I would have to learn informatica, I tried to google it. I *****COULDN'T*****! You know why!?!?!? Because it is an ITALIAN word! What does it mean?!?!? COMPUTING! So are we to prevent italians from talking about computing!?!?

Steve

I use rosetta stone myself, and never heard of that other software.

Rosetta stone is just paranoid They do enough offline marketing!

Did any of the affiliates have to pay any monetary compensatio to Rosetta Stone? I could not find that information on the updates page.

Their issue was with the sponsored links, and what was contained in those links.

It wasn't about organic rankings or referrals. That's still "gray".

Either way, be sure to do the following:

1) Disclose compensation where a material connection exists

2) Accurately portray any product/service you mention or write about. Don't mislead, lie or exaggerate.

3) Credit ownership of Trademarked names and symbols where credit is due. Talk to an attorney about how to properly portray and disclaim things as required.

Yes, you can still write and publish ABOUT pretty much anything, if you are a citizen of a free-speech country.

But you've got to stay on the level and be aware of how serious these companies take things like misrepresentation, libel and outright infringement.

There is a big difference between comparing products (which does organically draw targeted traffic as a natural result), and deliberately sand-bagging one in order to promote something else.

(That paypalsucks.com site comes to mind, as it prominently displays a competing merchant account service... amazed it's still up. So does the RipOffReport, whose owner allegedly had to flee the country to save his ass from being sued to oblivion.)

The bottom line is that over-hype and misdirection isn't good content, and won't be trusted or pay off in the long run.

Help your visitors by providing honest content and "keep it real". It's your right, it's more profitable long-term, and you'll stay safe in the process.

Cheers

-Chris

P.S. But to reiterate, talk to a lawyer about the fine-print stuff like what to say in your disclaimers and how to display trademarked images/text on your site. Laws vary by region, so it's not something you'll be able to figure out on the WF...