Links, Metatags: A Copyright and Trademark Law Perspective
![handle is hein.journals/inteproy4 and id is 915 raw text is: Chapter 75
LINKS, METATAGS: A COPYRIGHT AND
TRADEMARK LAW PERSPECTIVE
Alain Strowel'
As human beings, we establish multiple links: family ties, bonds of friendship,
marital links, and all other kinds of social links. Without these links, we would not
be what we are.
In a similar way, without the hyperlinks and other associational tools, the World
Wide Web would not be what it is. The hyperlink is to some extent the glue with
which the Web (in the strict sense of the term) is woven.2 The activity consisting of
weaving links, that is linking, makes it possible to overcome the incredible
dispersion of information available on the Internet.
Without the possibility of linking, without the possibility of using other
instruments, such as the search engines, which index the Web sites, the information
on the Web would lose most of its value. This is to say that these associational
means are essential for the development of the future information highways.
But their use does create some legal problems. More precisely, these tools are
able to affect intellectual property rights, copyrights and trademarks.'
' Alain Strowel is an attorney with the law firm, Nauta Dutilh, Brussels, and Professor at the Saint-
Louis University, Brussels and Universit6 de Liege. This paper was presented at the Seventh Annual
Conference on International Intellectual Property Law and Policy at Fordhan University School of Law
between April 8-9, 1999.
2 See Clay Webster (Journal of a Webster: http://www.unipress.com.people/clay, quoted by L.
Carriere, Hypertextes et hyperliens au regard du droit d'auteur: quelques 616ments de r6flexion, Les
Cahiers de proprit6 intellectuelle, p. 467, May 1997): The silent unassuming hero of the World Wide
Web, the glue of the Web, the hyperlink.
3 See, e.g., M. O'Rourke, Fencing Cyberspace: Drawing Borders in a Virtual World, 82 Minn.
L Rev. 609 (1998) [hereinafter Fencing Cyberspace] f.; L. A. Stangret, The legalities oflinking on
the World Wide Web, Comm. L, vol. 2, p. 202 (1997) ff.; W. A. Effross, Withdrawal ofthe Reference:
Rights, Rules andRemediesfor Unwelcomed Web-linking, 49 S.C. L. Rev. 651 (1998) if.; M. Jackson,
Linking Copyright to Homepages, 49 Fed. Comm. L.J., 731-59 (1997); J. R. Kuester et P. A. Nieves,
Hyperlinks, Frames and Metatags: An Intellectual Property Analysis, 38 IDEA 243 (1998) if. (see
in general the Panel Discussion: Link Law on the Internet, 38 IDEA 197, (1998) ff); L. Carriere,
Hypertextes et hyperliens au regard du droit d'auteur: quelques didments de rdflexion, Les Cahiers
de propritd intellectuelle, p. 467, May 1997 ff.; P. Trudel, Droit du cyberespace, Centre de recherche
en droit public de l'Universiti de Montr6al et 6d. Th6mis, p. 16-67 to 16-69 (1997). For an extended
bibliography on the subject, see the site of St. Bechtold, The Link Controversy Page
<http://wwwjura.uni-tuebingen.de/s-bes/lcp.html>.
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Links, Metatags: A Copyright and Trademark Law Perspective
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