Sheboygan County log home companies in trademark dispute
Wilderness Log Homes, a Sheboygan-based log-home builder, has filed a trademark infringement suit against a competitor in nearby Oostburg.
In a civil complaint filed June 20 in the U.S. District Court for Eastern Wisconsin, Wilderness accuses Expedition Log Homes, a company founded by a former Wilderness employee in 2000, of taking its home design materials and "deleting the Wilderness Log Homes and Greatwood Log Homes names and palming them off as their own."
The complaint also alleges that representatives of Expedition have "claimed to potential customers that they are a division of or affiliated with the plaintiffs."
Representatives of the two companies either declined to comment or could not be reached before press time.
The complaint also alleges Expedition uses the trademarked names of Wilderness Log Homes and its log-material catalog affiliate Greatwood Log Homes as meta tags in its Web site. Wilderness alleges that was done to deliberately confuse consumers.
Meta tags are bits of HTML code that contain keywords and other information designed to help search engines locate Web sites on specific topics. Most search engines rely on key words and descriptions found in meta tags to locate sites, while others use full-text scans of the Web.
The plaintiffs seek an immediate injunction against Expedition’s use of its materials and namesake along with financial compensation equal to three times the amount Expedition earned by allegedly using the Wilderness and Greatwood materials and trademarks.
According to Margaret Serrano, a Milwaukee intellectual property attorney, cases involving misappropriated construction drawings are cut-and dried as blueprints are by their very nature copyrighted.
However, Serrano, who has advised companies including S.C. Johnson Wax and Anheuser-Busch on trademark law, said use of trademarked terms in meta tags can be confusing.
"Sometimes it is OK and sometimes it is not OK," Serrano said. "The cases where it has been held to be either trademark infringement or dilution or deception are ones where someone is specifically setting out to mislead consumers. If someone uses the marks of major competitors to divert them to their site – that is considered deceptive."
However, Serrano sited the case of Playboy vs. Terri Welles as an example of a situation where use of a trademark in meta tags was allowable. Terri Welles had been a former Playmate of the Year, and used the term Playboy in the meta tag of her Web site.
"Of course, Playboy sued her," Serrano said. "But Playboy lost. The court held it to be basically a fair use because the trademark was part, loosely, of Welles’ resumé."
July 5, 2002 Small Business Times, Milwaukee
