What if a competitor copied the metatags on your website and you
watched web traffic bleed from your own site while the
competitor's site enjoyed a bump in hits? Are metatags subject
to copyright or trademark protection? The recent Federal Court
decision in Red
Label Vacations Inc. (redtag.ca) v. 411 Travel Buys Limited
(411travelbuys.ca), 2015 FC 19 (CanLII), dealt with just such a
dispute when Red Label sued its competitor 411 Travel for copying
the title tags, meta descriptions and meta keywords on 48 pages of
the 411 Travel website.
The court reviewed the facts and past metatag decisions and
decided that, on balance, the metatags that were copied did not
qualify for copyright protection. "In this case there is
little evidence of any sufficient degree of skill and judgement in
creating these metatags...or for the originality required in
compiling data or other compilations... While in some cases
there may be sufficient originality in metatags to attract
copyright
