We are a small local search engine that has created a web directory of
local sites, posted by category and made available to the general
public. These links to local websites have been generated by our
research and posted in our web directory, free of charge to the
companies that own the websites we are linking to. Recently I have
received an email from a company with a free listing, that has told us
we are violating their copyright laws and that if we don't remove
their listing in our directory, we will face litigation. My question
is, since we are not using any part of their information other than
displaying a link to their site in our directory, are we violating
copyright laws by providing a link to a website that is considered
available in public domain?

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Request for Question Clarification by journalist-ga on 01 Aug 2005 15:08 PDT

Some clarification, please. :)

Have you, in any fashion, used their logo (or any image from their
site) with the link?  Or is this merely a text link such as
http://www.companyname.com ?

Does your link result appear in a framed page, or is it a clean link to their site?

These two articles might help you decide what to do.  I hope a
Researcher more familiar with the legal area of website linking will
be able to assist you.
http://www.bitlaw.com/internet/webpage.html#linking
http://www.templetons.com/brad/linkright.html


Best regards,
journalist-ga

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Clarification of Question by honestarizona-ga on 01 Aug 2005 16:00 PDT

You asked: 

Does your link result appear in a framed page, or is it a clean link to their site?

The answer is yes. However the link has been removed. You can still go
to yahoo and type in the company in questions name and see a reference
link on the second page of yahoo that takes you back to our directory.
He is now threatening to sue, stating that I'm stealing traffic from
him and directing it to my site. At this point I'm at the mercy of a
yahoo re-index that would remove reference to his site all together.

Case law has adopted the position that linking is not direct copyright
infringement (see http://www.gigalaw.com/articles/2000-all/isenberg-2000-10-all.html),
but at least one case has held that such linking may expose the site
on which the link appears to liability for vicarious or contributory
copyright infringement.  In Intellectual Reserve vs. Lighthouse
Ministries, 75 F. Supp.2d 1290 (D. Utah 1999), plaintiff owned the
copyright to certain publications used by the Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-day Saints.  Defendants posted one such publication on its
Web site, but the court ordered it removed.  Defendant thereafter
posted three links to other sites on which the same publication could
be found.  Plaintiff sought and obtained a preliminary injunction
against the links on the defendant?s website under a theory of
contributory copyright infringement.  See also Universal City Studios
v. Reimerdes, 111 F. Supp.2d 294 (S.D.N.Y. 2000) (page containing
links to other sites containing software called ?De-CSS? enjoined as
violating the DMCA).

Basically, just linking to another site without framing or deep
linking or using the other person's trademarks is pretty safe, as long
as by the link you are not directing others to content that infringes
a third party's copyright since that might expose you to contributory
or vicarious copyright infringement liability.  It is galling that he
claims you are infringing his copyright by placing a link on your
site.  You cannot claim a copyright in a hyperlink!  It is an address,
a fact, that is not subject to copyright protection.

I mean, holy cow, look at www.drudgereport.com!  Talk about a tour de
force of linking!

Hey IPFan, thank you for your two cents. Since posting my question,
I've conducted a considerable amount of research and have come to the
same conclusions. What is incredible about this specific story is that
as a result of our linking to his main page, he enjoyed showing up in
majors for more than 100 reference keyword sets, (by being in our
portal) all of which drove traffic back to his website for free with
no strings attached. He some how had it in his head that we had
scanned his entire site and recreated it in our portal page by page
and that was totally confounding. In any case he was the first problem
prospect out of 3.9 million that we have served to date and I'm sure
he won't be the last. Thank God for good, principaled business
practice. Our only mission is to help our customers bring relevant
content about their products and services to the web through honest,
straight forward SEO. If ever you come to AZ and you are looking for
good business, be sure to visit Arizona Business Online, we are easy
to find. Thanks again to you and Jouralist-ga for your efforts. AND A
BIG THANKS TO GOOGLE FOR SUCH AN AWESOME TOOL.    :) HonestArizona.

I did some research for a client and contacted the Copyright and
Trademark offices in Washington DC and the following statement was
given:

The mere mention of a copyright or trademark word in a domain or
otherwise does not in itself consititute an infraction on the rights
of a copyright or trademark owner.  Thus a link directly to a site
could not be considered a violation however in my opinion if a web
site owner does not appreciate traffic that you are sending at no
charge to them I would remove it but this has got to be one of the
most dumb things a site owner could want to do, reduce inbound links,
unless your page included adult content, gambling or illegal content
and links that they do not want to be affiliated with.

David Decker
http://www.prosubmitclub.com