You said Pet Meds.
Shock horror.
Total and utter rant coming up, but first let me tell you a story.
About a year ago a man called The Three Dog Blogger began a Dog blog for fun. After many months he began to make a Euro or two from it and was surprised. As time wore on he realised that maybe he could stop doing building work in Spain and maybe make a living from making websites and blogs on the Internet.
About a year later that is exactly what he now does. He provides resources for people to buy items online at cheap prices and tries his best to make sites that are helpful, or at least provide resources for people to buy items at the lowest prices online. He does this by being paid a commission if someone clicks on a link with a special code in it on his websites and goes on to buy something. He could use programs where he makes more money by using the most expensive suppliers rather than the cheapest, but he doesn’t, he tries to show people where to buy things cheaply, even if he makes less money
His good lady was taught how to do the same and as they both love animals some of what they do involves pets. Knowing how expensive ……wait for it….
Pet meds are they made a few websites that pointed people to the best place to buy many pet medications. One of the sites that Mrs. Three Dog Blogger set up was called Online Pet Meds.
The website address is www.onlinepetmeds.info
Now, on the site she points people to a few sources to buy pet meds for low prices. You know, that’s what we often call pet medications isn’t it?
Pet meds?
Now, none of these links for pet meds at good prices point to 1800petmeds. Simply because they are expensive and Mr Three Dog Blogger was also none too impressed that someone who apparently worked for them tried to spam his Dog Blog to get links to the frontline section of their website.
Now, this weekend the lovely lady who tries to show people where to get pet meds cheaply, and this does not include 1800petmeds, had an email from them.
Apparently none of us are allowed to say Pet Meds.
What is really amazing is that they have actually been able to trademark the term petmeds, not pet meds, but PetMeds. I Don’t know if that would happen today if you tried to trademark what is simply a descriptive term for pet medications but at the time they were allowed to trademark the term petmeds.
Because her website called Online Pet Meds has petmeds in the URL she was asked to sign over the site to 1800petmeds because she used the term petmeds in the title of her website address. Apparently they don’t like to get lawyers involved, said the email sender who never even had the courtesy to include their name, position, tel number etc.
So, shall we all say Pet Meds, Pet Meds, Pet Meds?
Oh, and there was me thinking that pet meds was a descriptive term for pet medications. Now, if we had called the site “1800petmedsonline” or something that was trying to mislead people in to thinking that we were 1800petmeds then I would understand. But simply using the descriptive term pet meds in the title does not mean we are impersonating them. At no point was the good (but rather upset) lady trying to make people think that they were going to a site that had anything to do with 1800 pet meds and I do not believe for one second anyone would confuse her site with theirs because she used the term pet meds in the website adress. She simply wanted to put a term in the address that people use when they are searching for ….um….pet meds online?
1800petmeds even use the term pet meds as a descriptive term on their site, as well as the trademarked term PetMeds, so even they admit that it is a descriptive term as well for ….um…..pet meds?
What is worrying is that so many sites have obviously simply handed over their websites to them after non threatening, we don’t like to involve lawyers, emails, just like the one she got.
Well, apparently they lost a case earlier this year over the terms Pet Med and the use of the words pet meds as a descriptive term was cited then as a reason why it is not a trademark infringement. You can read about it here although it is probably not very exciting to anyone apart from someone like the good lady who is worried about someone trying to take away from her the way she manages to put food on the table, as well as being honest and trying to let people buy…um….pet meds at the lowest prices. She doesn’t use affiliate programs to make the most money she uses ones that offer the best prices to pet owners looking for …um….pet meds.
What gets me, apart from the upset to my gorgeous lady, who has worked hard at finding low prices and good deals, as well as being able to work from home with me and not have to do office work anymore, is that 1800petmeds are so bloody expensive.
I guess this is why they always show up at the top of the search engines, they send all these “polite” emails to other people trying to offer better deals than them, and although they really don’t like to use lawyers can you please hand over all your hard work and your domain name. Oh, and if you don’t know how to hand it over to us we can tell you what to do.
Anyway, we shall see. Personally I don’t think they have a hope in hell but it is worrying and upsetting to see a massive company that already has the massive pet meds market pretty much sewn up to upset my Lady and to scare her. They obviously have a lot of money at their disposal and we don’t but I honestly refuse to give in and will fight to have the right to show people where they can buy….um….pet meds at low prices.
Um, sorry guys, that was the rant, in case you hadn’t guessed.
Honest, they are over priced as well. Use Amazon instead.
God, I must be angry, no affiliate link.
We shall see what happens I guess but if anyone else has heard about similar cases from them or has had the same thing happen I would be interested to hear about it. The good lady was not even aware that such things could happen and she certainly did not know that they had trademarked the term pet meds, and I did not even know that you could do such a thing for general descriptive terms. Can I trademark the term Dog Blog and get all the other Dog blogs apart from That Mutt And The Poodle And Dog Blog and a few others shut down?
p.s Any good lawyers out there?
“We ain’t going down like that”, to quote one of the more acceptable Cypress Hill lyrics.
Fingers crossed guys and I will let you know whether or not we both have to go back to mixing concrete and travelling to the UK to work in an office for a living, and being apart for 3 months at a time.
Adios
Related posts:
- 1800petmeds Reviews After looking at a few prices on the 1800petmeds reviews article here at the Dog Blog I thought we should...
- 1800petmeds.com Reviews Everyone has heard of 1800petmeds.com. They seem to show up anywhere that we are looking for pet meds. Here in...
Tags: 1800petmeds, pet meds
I do NOT begrudge your rant one tiny bit! I do not see how anyone was allowed to tm pet meds. Sometimes you have to wonder about the thought process, or lack of one, that people use, or rather don’t use!
I greatly appreciate your striving to provide the most cost effective sites. Anyone who has pets knows that it can be a real struggle sometimes to pay for food, pet health care, and pet meds. It is awesome to find a site that is run by people who do not try to gouge anyone and who also do the work to provide the rest of us with less expensive resources. So THANK YOU!!!!!!
Tammy,
Thanks. I too am at a loss as to how they could TM the term petmeds but I get the feeling that such things won’t be allowed now. Having 3 bone munchers we definitely know how expensive they can be at times so, yes we do try to get low prices for people. Let’s hope it can continue.
WOW! Um…I don’t even know what to say. This is absolutely ridiculous. We had a similar instance where my boyfriend had the domain name of a certain celebrity and we had some lawyers sending us threatening emails basically saying we had no right to the domain. We had to put some work into it, but we still have the domain. In all honestly, had they just asked politely, we probably would’ve just given it to them for an autographed golf ball. Oops, wasn’t trying to hint at who this person might be…
Pet Meds Pet Meds Pet Meds
Hey Lindsay,
It’s pretty odd isn’t it. Hence the next two posts about them. At least I can rank in the search engines for reviews and the like. I can’t see them winning as it is such a general term. Sounds like that Golfing domain would be worth quite a bit.