trademarks

jackson992 · #1 (**permalink**) 12-16-2003, 04:56 PM

This seems to be a popular topic these days. So I have the following scenario:

On my sites I am starting to oganize my navigation by merchant. So for example for art merchants the navigation looks like this:

Art

Joann
Flaxart
Poster Now
etc

To me this helps the visitors on my site and also results in more sales for the erchant as the links above contain only that merchant's products.

What are your thoughts?

Linda Buquet · #2 (**permalink**) 12-16-2003, 06:08 PM

Hey Jack,

That seems like a good way to categorize to me!

jackson992 · #3 (**permalink**) 12-16-2003, 08:21 PM

Thx Linda:)

I agree. However I know that some merchants don't like you using their name. That makes no sense to me as it can only help sales IMO

jackson992 · #4 (**permalink**) 12-18-2003, 06:27 PM

I ran this by a couple of merchants and they had no problem with it

Thx Patrice at Eastwood Company and Chris at his new Drivewerks program

Glenn Albert Bradley · #5 (**permalink**) 12-22-2003, 03:47 PM

Trademark, if you are an affiliate of a merchant who has a brand name, and you use it "fairly" to point to thier website. There is no problem, its fair use. However if the affiliate agreement states otherwise, consider this and make your decision. Search engines tend to be a no no. I personally agree with it, I have a company that has used my company name, my company mailing address just so they can sell mortgages, after the holidays Ill deal with them. I like the categorizing of merchants, it serves several purposes, easy for the reader, visitor or shopper to find stuff, two and most importantly, easy for you to find should you have to remove the affiliation for one of a thousand reasons it seems lately in affiliate marketing. If you really need more information about trademarks and other information of this type, I regularly head to www.firstgov.com, every state of the union is here, federal goings on etc, and they have really made it very easy to find stuff.

Chris - WSO · #6 (**permalink**) 12-23-2003, 05:45 AM

Hi Jackson

No worries, none of our merchants have any issue with this, either on the site or as SEO / CPC as long as the trademark is used to promote them and not a competitor. We have a new merchant coming up who won't allow CPC use of the brand but on a web page for marketing it'll still be fine.

Cheers

Chris

jackson992 · #7 (**permalink**) 12-23-2003, 05:00 PM

Chris:

Do you have a list posted somewhere of the places you run? I'm only aware of two but will join others if you have any:)