1-800-Pet-Meds and the curse of too much free time

Flippy and I did search engine marketing and optimization for years, starting back in 1998.  It was a “career” which required constant adaptation to changes in search engine algorithms, and in 2003 the trend at Google was to provide high rank to websites which had search terms as their domain names.  For example, if you wanted to buy a leather jacket, Google would give high search placement to Leather-Jacket.com.  Flippy and I were trying to sell a lot of pet products (among other things), so we bought the domain name pet-meds.us, hoping it might show up if people did searches for “pet meds”.  I actually used the site as an experiment and flipped a lot of words around, making some nonsensical sentences, trying to see what would hook the search engines.  The site was mostly just a mirror of our main pet coupon site, and I haven’t changed it since I first uploaded it in 2003.

A few days ago, out of the blue, we received an email from the 1-800-Pet-Meds.com lawyers.  They claimed that we were cybersquatting by registering that domain, and “It is clear that you are trying to capitalize on our client’s very strong trademark rights by using a confusingly similar domain name to divert traffic to your site”.  Um, dude, we registered that name four years ago, and it clearly says it’s a “pet coupon” site, and it links to about a dozen different online pet retailers.  Who is being confused?  We’ve never had type-in traffic for that site.  I’m just stunned that after all this time they’re threatening us to transfer the name to them, as if the name has any value.  I also feel that the expression “pet meds” is just common vernacular, and they can’t possibly go around stopping people from using the expression to refer to their pet’s prescriptions.  It’s just silly.  I won’t fight them excessively, because the domain has never earned us a penny, but it’s just stupid.  What a waste of everyone’s time.

In any case, I do believe I’ll pull all the 1-800-Pet-Med links from our sites which do generate traffic, and which do generate sales for them.  That will be a loss of a couple hundred dollars a month in sales for them, and it will cheer me up.  If you shop from an online pet pharmacy and want to send a big kick in the pants to them for being dumb, feel free to shop at PetCareRx, National Pet Pharmacy, PetScriptions, or Drs. Foster and Smith.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 09/03 at 01:57 AM

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

  1. I’d get a lawyer.

    Posted by Georg  on  09/03  at  12:05 PM

  2. I would get a lawyer too. And be glad not to use 1-800-Pet-Meds. Never did like the place anyway.
    Loved the article.
    Margie

    Posted by Margaret Elmendorf  on  09/03  at  12:10 PM

  3. Grrrrr. I’m with you, I’d not spend the time nor the energy nor the money on it, but I’d do what I could to stick pins in.

    Posted by Diana  on  09/04  at  06:37 AM

  4. I am an attorney who specializes in these matters.  You should win this case.  You should respond if they bring a UDRP proceeding. It is pure intimidation tactics.

    Posted by Enrico Schaefer  on  09/04  at  12:16 PM

  5. Or ask for a crap load of $ to sign over the URL to them.  Don’t give it up for free!!!

    Posted by Von Krankipantzen  on  09/06  at  12:30 PM

  6. Never heard from these folks again after my email to them…

    Posted by Leigh-Ann  on  10/26  at  03:47 AM
    7. Page 1 of 1 pages

Name:

Email:

Location:

URL:

Smileys

Remember my personal information

Notify me of follow-up comments?

What is the sum of 3 and 7?

Next entry: Brendan

Previous entry: Free online trades and a donation to autism research

<< Back to main