A very interesting case has hit the courts in Australia over a competitor outranking another competitor for a trademark term in the law firm space, the full article can be read here: http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/dunstan-playford-a-lawyer-with-many-aliases-but-fewer-clicks-after-court-clash-20120529-1zgml.html
The case runs as follows:
The lawyer in question runs an affiliate website which acts as a referral base for other law firms, so people who are looking for a lawyer they use this website as a referral base, this on itself is an interesting areas because I have worked in the law area in Australia in the past and I know their is many restrictions to what you can and can not do, The Law Society has also commented on the article above.
The lawyer in the case owned the domain: gotocourt.com.au
A competitor purchased a domain name: gotocourtlawyers.com.au
This competitor then out ranked the original site for many keywords in the SEO space, a primary keyword was “go to court lawyers” which out ranked the main website.
The original site has a trademark for the term “Go To Court” so they have placed an injunction on the original website to remove it from the serps for SEO as the new website has infact out ranked them see image below from SMH:
This is an interesting case because it will have ramifications on affiliates in the SEO space, as many affiliates who cannot target brand terms in the PPC space for years have been targeting the SEO space as it is free game.
It seems the owner of the domain gotocourt.com.au has now taken the domain gotocourtlawyers.com.au and is using a 301 redirect.
