In today’s ever-evolving online world, the intersection between trademark infringement and the use of trademarks as meta tags is an issue receiving more and more attention. In a drawn-out dispute spanning more than five years , the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania in Penn Engineering & Manufacturing Corp. v. Peninsula Components, Inc. added its opinion on the topic. On cross motions for summary judgment, the court faced the question of whether a likelihood of confusion could arise from the use of another party’s mark in meta tags within an internal search tool that searches only the company’s own website and returns results for only the company’s products. On these facts, the answer was “no.”
