学術国際会議派遣報告(佐藤恵太教授)
本学法務研究科 佐藤恵太教授が「アジア法学協会第6回年次大会」に参加、研究発表を行いました。以下、学術国際会議派遣の報告をいたします。
【会議名】アジア法学協会第6回年次大会
(6th Asian Law Institute Annual Conference)
【主催機関名】アジア法学協会 香港大学
(Asian Law Institute/Univ.of HongKong)
【開催地】香港(中国)
【発表日】2009年5月29日(金) および5月30日(土)
【発表のテーマ】
「インターネット環境における商標権侵害;メタタグおよびキーワードの使用」
【発表の内容】
The topic of this paper is; whether a word as used for meta-tag or keyword for search engine should be trademark infringement or not. Trademark right covers use for a word as trademark. Because trademark is used not to distinguish product type and so on, but to distinguish the source of the goods or services for the product or service. For example, a package of a snack shows several words on surface. Product Name ”Xiatiao” or “Kappa Ebisen”, product type description like “snack”, “chill taste”, advertisement word ”for afternoon break with coffee”, Company name “Calbee”, and so on. “Kappa ebisen” is a registered trademark (Japanese Trademark registration No.4400062), however, words like “snack” “chill taste” could not be registered as trademark because those kinds of word have no function to distinguish the product source. On the other hand, so many words used for web-pages in the internet circumstance. Some introduce “Kappaebisen” for her favorite snacks in her blog, however, that use of the word ”Kappa ebisen” is not infringement of trademark right owned by Calbee company. Because the operator of the blog just introduced the product name, and it is not use as trademark. In this sense, trademark infringement in internet circumstances is almost the same as non-virtual, real world.
However, there are ways interrupting search engine function. I would like to discuss such ways could be trademark infringement or not.
First, putting a word registered as a trademark into meta-tag section for the website. Meta-tag is one of the hidden code information inserted by the web designer in order to distinguish the website or other purposes. Such codes are selected freely by website designer, and then un-authorized use of marks in meta-tags gives rise to the inevitable trademark disputes. Once USA court decided in Brookfield Communications, Inc. v. West Coast Entertainment Corp., 174 F. 3d 1036(9th Cir.1999) that use a word registered as a trademark in the meta-tag section could be infringement under initial interest confusion theory. But in Japan, the situation is different. Osaka Dist. Ct. in 2004 decided a word in the meta-tag section could be trademark infringement in the case that such word was used in the meta-tag section for “meta description =”.That means Osaka decision suggested only if the word for meta-tag shows on the search result, such use is infringement.
Second, using marks as a keyword for web-advertising. Several disputes are argued and settled before US courts, as gator pop-up-advertisement case and others.
The paper discusses these problems and would clarify the difference for those problems between virtual context and real context.