Shelby's latest lawsuit, who's next?

[elmariachi]

There have already been cases where courts ordered that use of metatags constitute infringment and where reparations had to be paid. As I recall, in one case the defendants had to surrender all their profits during the period they were using them.

Here are the current tags on the FFR site:

content="AC,Cobra,Cobra cars,coupe,427,FIA,kit,replica,factory five racing,fiero,mustang,5.0,kit cars,kit car,factory five,performance,racing,parts,automotive,restorati on,GTM,supercar,mid-engine car,corvette"

[Don DePontee]

Wouldn't these types of lawsuits eventual brake down the effectiveness of any search engine to be able to perform it's intended design purpose? Will all search engine go away or become severely limited putting us in a position where rather than having a yellow pages type system which guides you with general words or topics we would have to know the exact name much like dialing 411. I don't know, maybe I'm not grasping the full picture on Meta Tags yet.
Don

[vanoochka]

Originally Posted by Don DePontee

Wouldn't these types of lawsuits eventual brake down the effectiveness of any search engine to be able to perform it's intended design purpose? Will all search engine go away or become severely limited putting us in a position where rather than having a yellow pages type system which guides you with general words or topics we would have to know the exact name much like dialing 411. I don't know, maybe I'm not grasping the full picture on Meta Tags yet.
Don

Actually, meta tags are only one of the many elements that search engines consider and weigh when ranking results. For example, Google considers links to be a very important factor in its ranking algorithm - more so than meta tags. However, if you go out and collect a bunch of links they consider frivolous, it can actually backfire and hurt your ranking. It's all very sophisticated and with enough checks and balances that the result of Mr. Shelby's lawsuit will not affect the effectiveness of any credible search engine.

I could also build a pretty compelling arguement that any judgement resulting in a few hundred dollars of royalties per car to be paid to CS would not cause the collapse of the industry. But, since I don't personally like the fact that he is litigating over this issue, combined with having witnessed the public burning of the heretic elmariachi at the stake, I think I'll save it for another time.

[patrickt]

Originally Posted by Don DePontee

Wouldn't these types of lawsuits eventual brake down the effectiveness of any search engine to be able to perform it's intended design purpose?

If by some chance this case ends up limiting the effectiveness of search engines (doubtful), states here in the 4th Circuit would gladly welcome Google and others. You learn very quickly not to cite a 9th Circuit case here in the 4th Circuit.