Hotel trademark and online travel agents

[jimberan]

What is the name of your state? all

Our company offers hotels through out the world on our travel website. We dont deal with hotels directly but we work with wholesalers.

Some hotels and chains are now sending us emails and faxed demanding that we take their hotels of our websites as their company name or hotel name is a trademark and we can not have their names on our websites without their permission. Is that correct?

 

[davezan]

You got it. Unless you gained permission directly from those parties, you're
infringing on their trademarks.

Consider yourself lucky they only asked you to take off their names and not
transfer your domains to them.

 

[divgradcurl]

davezan is not completely correct here. There are "fair uses" of trademarks, just as their are for copyrighted works, although trademark fair use is much more limited than copyright fair use. Basically, it is okay to use someone else's trademark if the use is purely descriptive, and is does not "confuse" a customer inot believing that you are an authorized agent of the trademark holder or otherwise affiliated with or associated with the trademark hoilder.

So, it would likely be a "fair use" of a trademark to say "We have a room at the Hilton Moscow for $99" -- that use is a purely descriptive use. It is probably NOT okay to say "Rooms cheap -- Hilton, Motel 6, Hyatt..." Generally a "purely descriptive use" means describing a particular thing, or maybe even a group of things, but not a general or generic use.

I don't know how you are using the terms on your website, but the use of trademarks is not automatically infringement. You might want to discuss this with a trademark lawyer before taking any drastic steps.

Another thing -- if you have your website set up such that you are using tradmarked names in keywords, metatags, page titles, etc., so that you show up in search engines when someone types in, say, "Hilton," then that IS trademark infringement, period.

 

[davezan]

Thanks for the clarifications, divgradcurl!