Legal News

The US government’s Federal Trade Commission has changed the guidelines for bloggers (and celebrities) who write paid reviews or offer endorsements, and I think this is a very good thing for people who read blogs. Bloggers now must reveal whether they were compensated for a product or service review found on their website, which is similar to disclosures companies need to make in advertisements. If they fail to do so, they could receive significant fines.

According to the Federal Trade Commission’s revised Final Guides Governing Endorsements, Testimonials:

The revised Guides also add new examples to illustrate the long standing principle that “material connections” (sometimes payments or free products) between advertisers and endorsers – connections that consumers would not expect – must be disclosed. These examples address what constitutes an endorsement when the message is conveyed by bloggers or other “word-of-mouth” marketers.

I can’t recall a time when I wrote a paid review on behalf of a company, although I have turned down several requests. On occasion, a company will offer services (development services for example) in exchange for a mention on my blog, but I generally refrain from providing any opinion in those posts.

When I do provide an opinion, it is based on my actual experience rather than simply writing a glowing report in exchange for a fee. My blogging goal has always been to be helpful to others, and if there’s ever a time when something is written and I am compensated, I will certainly disclose it to you. I also want to add that when a person or company does exceptional work or goes above and beyond on a project for me, I want to let people know about it.

Mike posted an article about a case that I read yesterday regarding Louis Vuitton being awarded $32 million in damages from two hosting companies that were found guilty of Contributory Trademark Infringement. The companies had apparently been informed that there were counterfeit goods being sold on websites it hosted, but it did nothing:

“In awarding the damages, the jury agreed with Paris-based Louis Vuitton Malletier S.A.’s claims that the defendants knowingly allowed several Web sites they hosted to sell products that infringed Louis Vuitton’s copyrights and trademarks.”

When I first read the Computerworld article, my thought was that there are probably some domain parking companies that are nervous about this. At least two large parking companies have their operations in California, and they would presumably be held to the rulings of the U.S. District Court in the state of California. Further, one could believe that any company doing business with California residents could potentially be held liable for Contributory Trademark Infringement if they are doing anything to help monetize a trademark infringing domain name.

A parking company that provides PPC landing pages for hundreds of thousands of domain names could be in a similar position as the hosting companies in this situation. There’s no way to monitor every single potential trademark violation on all of the domain names it helps monetize. It will be even more important for them to look into every trademark infringement email notification they receive.