US Court: SEO firms liable for legality of clients' behavior

[$5 submissions]

If you provide SEO services for shady clients, the illegal nature of their business can extend liability to your business as well. Question: What if the true nature of your client's business is hidden from you? OR... its legal in your jurisdiction but illegal in a third party's jurisdiction?

Source: http://www.internetretailer.com/2011...nterfeit-goods

A federal court has ruled that a firm that provided marketing and web hosting services was financially responsible for the sale of counterfeit golf clubs by a client e-retailer.

A federal judge in South Carolina entered a judgment against Bright Builders Inc. on counts of contributory trademark infringement and unfair trade practices for allegedly assisting in the construction and hosting of the e-commerce site CopyCatClubs.com. Judge Margaret B. Seymour of the U.S. District Court for South Carolina ordered Bright Builders to pay $770,750 in statutory damages and Christopher Prince, owner of the web site, $28,250, according to lawyers for the plaintiff, Cleveland Golf Company Inc.

[pornlaw]

Trademark is much more powerful that copyright.... This type of decision is becoming more common. There's a Ninth Circuit case that held basically the same as this one.

[fatfoo]

I think that to establish who is guilty, the judge needs to think about what the accused company knew. It's like the product was sold to a criminal. Did the company know that they were selling to a criminal? Maybe yes or maybe no. The SEO company provides search optimization texts about golf clubs. Did the SEO company know that the golf clubs were counterfeit? Maybe yes or maybe no. Perhaps the counterfeit is obvious, because even the domain name suggests imitations or copies or products - CopyCatClubs.com. Copying physical products and golf clubs could be like plagiarizing texts and then someone might demand something written in your words or tools made with your own hands.

[Barry-xlovecam]

Aiding and abetting an unlawful act ...

Michael, how far of a stretch that this same thinking might be brought to bear on the advertisers on copyright infringing websites (tubes and torrents in particular)?

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[$5 submissions]

Sadly the court didn't put any hard and fast limits.

[L-Pink]

Bump .......

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[marketsmart]

why the fuck does the owner of the sight only have to pay 28k...

those numbers should be reversed between the seo company and him...






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[$5 submissions]

why the fuck does the owner of the sight only have to pay 28k...

those numbers should be reversed between the seo company and him...






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Good point. Maybe they are looking to punish the party with the "deeper pockets"?

[pornlaw]

Aiding and abetting an unlawful act ...

Michael, how far of a stretch that this same thinking might be brought to bear on the advertisers on copyright infringing websites (tubes and torrents in particular)?

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I just saw a case where advertisers where hit with the same issue and the court ruled in the favor of the copyright holder. I will take a look and see if I can find it.

Here's another interesting case - Google lost in France for copyright infringement and were ordered to pay approx. 500,000 Euros for linking to infringing material.... This is the first time in my life that I can say the French are doing something better than the US Courts...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03...opyright_fine/

[czarina]

ouch, that's bad news for us designers. How about if I don't know the golf clubs are fake, or that it's illegal to sell clubs that are generic?

[PornoMonster]

Now lets apply this to tubes.

I guess everyone will just start hosting overseas.

[Barry-xlovecam]

Overseas would not include North America or Europe ... Somalia?





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[$5 submissions]

Overseas would not include North America or Europe ... Somalia?





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Are there somalian hosting companies? Talk about bulletproof (pun intended). I can see their slogan now: We take PIRACY to another level. LOL

[Quentin]

ouch, that's bad news for us designers. How about if I don't know the golf clubs are fake, or that it's illegal to sell clubs that are generic?

Well, not doing designs for sites with names like "CopyCatClubs.com" that publish statements like "your one stop shop for the best copied golf equipment on the Internet" would probably be a good start. ;-)

That's what sunk the SEO company here, IMO; it was pretty hard to say "we didn't know our client was pulling shit" when it is that freaking obvious your client is pulling shit.

I wouldn't worry too much about this ruling's impact on your design business, so long as you do some due diligence on the people/companies that you design for. In order for a jury to be convinced that you "knew, or should have known" that the site in question was doing something illegal, there has to be some manner of evidence that points to your knowledge.

This isn't "strict liability" territory; lack of knowledge of the underlying criminality is a valid defense, and the burden is on the plaintiff to prove that you had the knowledge that you deny having. True, it's a lower standard in civil court than in criminal court ("preponderance of the evidence" vs. "beyond a reasonable doubt") but they can't merely accuse you of knowing and call it a day -- they would have to show the court some evidence, or their claims against you would probably be tossed out before the case ever reached the trial phase.

[pornguy]

I wouldn't worry too much about this ruling's impact on your design business, so long as you do some due diligence on the people/companies that you design for. In order for a jury to be convinced that you "knew, or should have known" that the site in question was doing something illegal, there has to be some manner of evidence that points to your knowledge.

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Good luck with that in court.

They dont have to prove that you knew or should have known. You have to prove that you did not know or that you could not have known.. Lot harder.

[Relentless]

How direct the connection is matters.
What will likely happen is intermediary sites.

SEO company builds link weight for 'DesignerPurses.com' as a legitimate business site.
The owner of designerpurses.com then uses that site and others to pass weight to a bunch of other sites including knockoffpurses.com as an infringing site.
The SEO is protected and the company hosts their sites in hongkong or wherever...

LinkLaundering.com anyone?

[Tom_PM]

Seems it was just so blatant then. It doesn't even pass a rudimentary smell test with a domain name like that.

[icymelon]

seems like part of the issue is that they did more than just seo but created the site using their system. Without knowing more it would seem that it would create them as co-creators. The issue doesn't seem to be they provided seo services but they provided more.