SAF members can contact attorney Jessica Summers with the law firm Paley Rothman for a free 15-minute legal consultation at 301-968-3402. Be sure to mention your SAF membership.
“My name is Charles Goodfellow and I’m the owner of Paley Florist in Paley, Maryland. When you search the name of my business online, the first few results direct you to order gathering sites, not my website. This is confusing my customers. Is there any legal action I can take to prevent the order gathering sites from advertising themselves as ‘Paley Florist’?”
This order gathering tactic is among the most common legal questions that members of the Society of American Florists have asked Paley Rothman. SAF partners with the Bethesda, Maryland law firm so members can get quick answers to business legal questions — for free.
Through the partnership, SAF members can contact attorney Jessica Summers for a free 15-minute legal consultation on a variety of issues such as taxes, estate planning, employment law, leases and real estate, copy rights and trademarks, acquisitions and regulatory compliance. Members can contact Summers at 301-968-3402. Be sure to mention your SAF membership.
Summers offers this legal advice regarding the order gathering tactic:
“Unfortunately, this is a big challenge for many businesses for which there is no good solution. Even if a business like Paley Florist has trademarked its name, it will be considered a ‘weak trademark’ and will be difficult to enforce.
The reason for this is that even if you have trademarked the business name, in general, you cannot prohibit someone from using the name of a place and other common descriptive terms like ‘florist.’ Accordingly, while it is certainly frustrating for the businesses and their customers, the order gatherers aren’t actually doing anything illegal by advertising themselves using ‘Florist’ and the name of the town.
The situation would be different if the business was named ‘Goodfellows Paley Flowers’ and the order gatherers were using this name to collect orders, because this type of unique name can be trademarked and its use restricted.
Ever better would be what is referred to as a fanciful mark that is not descriptive — famous trademarks that are purely fanciful but have now come to be synonymous with the public for a particular business or product include Xerox, Apple computer, Google, Amazon, Four Seasons, and so on.
Businesses, particularly new businesses, are therefore well advised, to consider giving themselves unique names that won’t be easily usurped on search engines.”
Please note: The explanations and discussions of legal principles herein are intended to be used for informational purposes and are not to be relied upon as legal advice. Situations may vary and nothing included herein is intended by the author to be used as the principal basis for specific action without first obtaining the review and advice of an attorney.
For more programs and services available through SAF membership, visit safnow.org/business-service-discounts.
