given the boot.... for talking giberish...

[dunwoody_33]

What is the name of your state? Nevada.

I was an authorized distributor for company lets call it "ZebraCo.".
I purchased $10,000 worth of product.

In an attempt to optimize my website by having more pages in my web site, I went to the public domain and got a 1000 page book. To make the book unqiue, I replace common words like "and", "is" " the" with words like "psychology" "apple", etc. One of the random words i chose was the company name I then replaced words like "and" with the company name. I used the company name liberally throughout a document which had nothing to do with the company. So if you read a random page, it would read like giberish.... "frog cake was a vital zebraco people therefore" etc.

The company discovered the 1000 page book of random words i created on my website and was furious that their company name was used like this.

My distributorship was cancelled. I dont have a problem with that... it's their right.... however

My questions are:

Is this a violation of trademark law to use a company name like this?

If they sued me ...What kind of liability do i have? (i doubt more than 10 people even looked at that part of the website, so i cant see what damage it did)

Do i have a right to sell my $10,000 worth of product even though i am no longer an authorized distributor?

The distributor manual says i must sell it to end users in a consulting field but i am no longer a distributor, can i sell it to whomever i want?

If i can sell it, what do i need to do legally? (Im sure i can't use any of their pictures, but can i state the product name? do i just need to put (r) and identify the products as registered trademarks of "zebraco"?

I have a very well positioned website and would like to sell or rent the web site to distributors who have not been given the boot..... any suggestion?

Thanks to you pros....

 

[divgradcurl]

Is this a violation of trademark law to use a company name like this?

Absolutely. You were using someone else's trademark to drive traffic to your site. It doesn't really matter how you do it -- meta tags, putting the name in the title of the page, using "hidden" text on the page, or what you did -- if you use a trademark without authorization to drive traffic to your site, you are infringing on the trademark rights of the trademark owner.

If they sued me ...What kind of liability do i have? (i doubt more than 10 people even looked at that part of the website, so i cant see what damage it did)

You are liable for trademark infringement. Check out 15 U.S.C. 1117 to see what you could potentially be liable for -- probably lost profits and costs, at least. http://www.bitlaw.com/source/15usc/1117.html Costs, especially, could be onerous...

Do i have a right to sell my $10,000 worth of product even though i am no longer an authorized distributor?

What does you agreement with the trademark holder say?

The distributor manual says i must sell it to end users in a consulting field but i am no longer a distributor, can i sell it to whomever i want?

Not without potentially ending up with further liability for trademark infringement.

If i can sell it, what do i need to do legally? (Im sure i can't use any of their pictures, but can i state the product name? do i just need to put (r) and identify the products as registered trademarks of "zebraco"?

What does the trademark holder say? The general rule is that you can use a trademark is a "purely descriptive" manner to describe a product, but that's about it.

You are kind of in a tough situation here. Maybe you should see if the manufacturer would be willing to buy back the materials, so you can just get your money back.