Living with Bad Credit
Trademark & Etc
Guess what. I just received a letter from an attorney stating that one of my site is using a copyrighted term. The term that they are going after is “Living with Bad Credit” I didn’t know such a broad term can be copyrighted. Anyway, I will change it to something like.. hmm.. “Living with Bad Credits” or something.
I know many of you run finance-related niche sites. Just keep in mind that the term “Living with Bad Credit” is copyrighted.
I had some funny thoughts. What if I out-rank their site with the term “Living with Bad Credit”? Their landing page has PR3 and their main sites have…umm.. well, take a look. What if this post out-rank their website for the term eventually? :)
Anyway, if I were them, I’d rather spend money on SEO and their sales copy. They need some serious help.
June 4th, 2007 at 11:53 pm
LOL, this post got to #3 position for “Living with Bad Credit” search term in Google in like 2 days.
June 4th, 2007 at 2:06 pm
I’ve had the same happen to me in a non-english website for a term related to chimneys. “Chimney with a conduct” or “chimney without a conduct”, something pretty generic like that.
The funny part though was that it wasn’t really text written on the website, but text included in adsense ads. Ads that weren’t showing in my country. Had to tell them how adwords/adsense works and to contact the guy behind the ad, was fun :-)
May 31st, 2007 at 8:45 am
Tis fud Bo.
That phrase can only be seen as a descriptive trademark. This means it can only be registrable if assumes a distinctive character in the marketplace for that concern. Which it hasn’t.
I can see why you’ve changed it though as dealing with such legal fud can be a costly nightmare
May 30th, 2007 at 10:07 pm
It’s a trademark issue. and it says “408 communication” on the letter.
Well I changed a word from the title of my site. I hope it’s good enough. lol
May 30th, 2007 at 7:32 pm
Was it a cease and decist letter? This sounds a little fishy because their logo doesn’t show a trademark…
May 29th, 2007 at 9:04 pm
I’m pretty sure they can’t copyright that. It could be a trademark maybe, but not a copyright on a phrase. You might want to check this out:
http://www.eff.org/bloggers/lg/