Today I'm discussing a case involving alleged trademark infringement and meta tags. It's very dangerous to outrank your competitor, especially if that competitor has limitless pockets and very generic registered trademarks.
U-Haul and eMove, Inc. vs Michael Glanz and HireAHelper, Inc.
United States District Court of Arizona, 2-08-cv-01271
United States District Court of Arizona, 2-08-cv-01271
The Parties
U-Haul owns eMove.com, a site offering moving services and products since roughly 2005. U-Haul and eMove.com are suing Hire A Helper, Inc and its owner, Michael Glanz.
HireAHelper began in 2007 and operates a website of the same name that offers several different kinds of casual labor, including moving services. Both Glanz and his wife were personally named as defendants in the lawsuit.
It's a bit of a David and Goliath situation; U-Haul is a giant and Mr. Glanz's HireAHelper is a young upstart in the hotly contested moving industry.
There are a few interesting factual entanglements in this story. Glanz probably got on U-Haul's radar before he even went live with his site.
Glanz was a beginning web designer and still in school when he first began thinking about a building a website to connect consumers with casual labor in 2005.
In 2005 and prior to starting HireAHelper, Glanz signed up with eMove to offer moving services. U-Haul alleges that he signed up in order to steal U-Haul's proprietary secrets and know-how. During the five-month period he was registered with eMove, Glanz declined 23 moving jobs and accepted four, but only actually completed one. Emove offers this as evidence that Glanz had ulterior motives in accessing its site.
Glanz, on the other hand, alleges that he signed up to be a mover at eMove.com in 2005 because he was a student and wanted to make some extra money in his free time helping people move. Glanz also alleges that he took so few jobs because they ended up not really working with his full-time student schedule. Further, Glanz freely admits that his own experience helping people move partly inspired him to include moving labor as one the types of casual labor markets his site promotes.
Interestingly, the contract Glanz entered into in order to register as a mover with eMove included a lot of probably unenforceable provisions about the confidentiality of ALL information on eMove.com, even the public information. It also includes strict provisions about use of trademarks, trade dress and domain names. One of the reasons that U-Haul is suing Glanz personally (and not just his corporation) is because Glanz entered into this contract in his personal capacity.
In addition to becoming a member of eMove for a brief period in 2005, Glanz wrote a blog post discussing eMove.com two months before unveiling HireAHelper.com in 2007. In the post, he pays eMove.com a backhanded compliment by listing it as a site that suffers from 'bad design," but succeeds at business better than fancier designed e-commerce sites. It appears that U-Haul began preparing for this case only a matter of months after this post and the launch of the new site. Coincidence? I think not.
HireAHelper began in 2007 and operates a website of the same name that offers several different kinds of casual labor, including moving services. Both Glanz and his wife were personally named as defendants in the lawsuit.
It's a bit of a David and Goliath situation; U-Haul is a giant and Mr. Glanz's HireAHelper is a young upstart in the hotly contested moving industry.
The Story, In Brief
There are a few interesting factual entanglements in this story. Glanz probably got on U-Haul's radar before he even went live with his site.
Glanz was a beginning web designer and still in school when he first began thinking about a building a website to connect consumers with casual labor in 2005.
In 2005 and prior to starting HireAHelper, Glanz signed up with eMove to offer moving services. U-Haul alleges that he signed up in order to steal U-Haul's proprietary secrets and know-how. During the five-month period he was registered with eMove, Glanz declined 23 moving jobs and accepted four, but only actually completed one. Emove offers this as evidence that Glanz had ulterior motives in accessing its site.
Glanz, on the other hand, alleges that he signed up to be a mover at eMove.com in 2005 because he was a student and wanted to make some extra money in his free time helping people move. Glanz also alleges that he took so few jobs because they ended up not really working with his full-time student schedule. Further, Glanz freely admits that his own experience helping people move partly inspired him to include moving labor as one the types of casual labor markets his site promotes.
Interestingly, the contract Glanz entered into in order to register as a mover with eMove included a lot of probably unenforceable provisions about the confidentiality of ALL information on eMove.com, even the public information. It also includes strict provisions about use of trademarks, trade dress and domain names. One of the reasons that U-Haul is suing Glanz personally (and not just his corporation) is because Glanz entered into this contract in his personal capacity.
In addition to becoming a member of eMove for a brief period in 2005, Glanz wrote a blog post discussing eMove.com two months before unveiling HireAHelper.com in 2007. In the post, he pays eMove.com a backhanded compliment by listing it as a site that suffers from 'bad design," but succeeds at business better than fancier designed e-commerce sites. It appears that U-Haul began preparing for this case only a matter of months after this post and the launch of the new site. Coincidence? I think not.
The Issues
It appears that eMove is very displeased to be outranked by HireAHelper for certain keywords, including "moving help." Instead of telephoning Glanz or sending a Cease and Desist letter, U-Haul simply filed a lawsuit against Glanz, his wife and his company. On what legal grounds is U-Haul bringing the suit?
U-Haul apparently owns the registered trademarks "Moving Help®" and "Moving Helper®". Yeah. I know. Those particular phrases look pretty generic and descriptive to me too. Now. I'm not saying this is what is going on here, but it seems like an increasingly popular strategy for corporations to try and get their most profitable keywords registered with the trademark office so that they can then send nasty cease and desist letters or initiate expensive legal battles against smaller competitors. The little guys are much less likely to put up a fight. They know they can't afford the legal battle to invalidate registration of the claimed trademarks.
[Note: Remember, just because the trademark office registers a trademark, does not mean that the mark will hold up in court. For example, consider the sad case of American Blinds. Claiming infringement of their registered trademark, American Blinds sued Google in federal court. Not only did they lose the infringement claim, the judge also invalidated their trademark by ruling "American Blinds" was too generic to be protected by trademark law. Thus, American Blinds actually ended the lawsuit with less than it started.
So, just because a trademark is registered doesn't mean it is bullet proof. Having a registered trademark is an evidentiary advantage in a lawsuit and allows you to claim more money damages than non-registered trademarks, but it is not a sure-fire win in a court of law.
But I digress. Back to the issue in this case.]
HireAHelper allegedly uses the words "moving," "helper" and "moving helper" in the content of its website. U-Haul claims that HireAHelper's use infringes its lawful trademarks.
In addition to trademark infringement, U-Haul is claiming copyright infringement, breach of contract, and misappropriation of trade secrets, among other things. It is also asking the judge to immediately (i.e., pre-trial) prohibit HireAHelper from using "moving help" or "moving helper" in any of its meta tags or visible content.
It is beyond the scope of this post to go over each claim, but I think the trademark infringement case forms the backbone of U-Haul's rather weak case. U-Haul appears to have a difficult time identifying how exactly HireAHelper infringes its copyrights and instead makes vague assertions about the structure of the websites being too similar. Further, the contract claims only hold water to the extent the trademark and copyright claims are valid. It just seems unlikely that Glanz was given access to anything truly proprietary and confidential during the five months he was registered as a mover with eMove.com. Of course, it is very early in the litigation process and U-Haul filed some things "under seal," meaning "in secret." Thus, the case outlook could change completely in the discovery process.
Even though the lawsuit was only filed this summer, the lawyers have been very busy raising arguments about injunctions, jurisdiction, extensions of time, etc. It is likely that HireAHelper feels the expense of this litigation much more painfully than U-Haul.
Given their differences in resources, U-Haul may win the lawsuit by sheer attrition: He who can afford to keep going wins. The sooner it can drown HireAHelper in attorneys' fees, the better U-Haul's chances of forcing a settlement before a judge can adjudicate its highly descriptive/generic trademarks. It is the sad truth that we don't have equal access to justice in the U.S.A.
As always, I'll keep you posted as the case develops.
Best Regards,
Sarah Bird
U-Haul apparently owns the registered trademarks "Moving Help®" and "Moving Helper®". Yeah. I know. Those particular phrases look pretty generic and descriptive to me too. Now. I'm not saying this is what is going on here, but it seems like an increasingly popular strategy for corporations to try and get their most profitable keywords registered with the trademark office so that they can then send nasty cease and desist letters or initiate expensive legal battles against smaller competitors. The little guys are much less likely to put up a fight. They know they can't afford the legal battle to invalidate registration of the claimed trademarks.
[Note: Remember, just because the trademark office registers a trademark, does not mean that the mark will hold up in court. For example, consider the sad case of American Blinds. Claiming infringement of their registered trademark, American Blinds sued Google in federal court. Not only did they lose the infringement claim, the judge also invalidated their trademark by ruling "American Blinds" was too generic to be protected by trademark law. Thus, American Blinds actually ended the lawsuit with less than it started.
So, just because a trademark is registered doesn't mean it is bullet proof. Having a registered trademark is an evidentiary advantage in a lawsuit and allows you to claim more money damages than non-registered trademarks, but it is not a sure-fire win in a court of law.
But I digress. Back to the issue in this case.]
HireAHelper allegedly uses the words "moving," "helper" and "moving helper" in the content of its website. U-Haul claims that HireAHelper's use infringes its lawful trademarks.
In addition to trademark infringement, U-Haul is claiming copyright infringement, breach of contract, and misappropriation of trade secrets, among other things. It is also asking the judge to immediately (i.e., pre-trial) prohibit HireAHelper from using "moving help" or "moving helper" in any of its meta tags or visible content.
Conclusion
It is beyond the scope of this post to go over each claim, but I think the trademark infringement case forms the backbone of U-Haul's rather weak case. U-Haul appears to have a difficult time identifying how exactly HireAHelper infringes its copyrights and instead makes vague assertions about the structure of the websites being too similar. Further, the contract claims only hold water to the extent the trademark and copyright claims are valid. It just seems unlikely that Glanz was given access to anything truly proprietary and confidential during the five months he was registered as a mover with eMove.com. Of course, it is very early in the litigation process and U-Haul filed some things "under seal," meaning "in secret." Thus, the case outlook could change completely in the discovery process.
Even though the lawsuit was only filed this summer, the lawyers have been very busy raising arguments about injunctions, jurisdiction, extensions of time, etc. It is likely that HireAHelper feels the expense of this litigation much more painfully than U-Haul.
Given their differences in resources, U-Haul may win the lawsuit by sheer attrition: He who can afford to keep going wins. The sooner it can drown HireAHelper in attorneys' fees, the better U-Haul's chances of forcing a settlement before a judge can adjudicate its highly descriptive/generic trademarks. It is the sad truth that we don't have equal access to justice in the U.S.A.
As always, I'll keep you posted as the case develops.
Best Regards,
Sarah Bird
Interesting post Sarah. At first pass I was thinking "Boycott Uhaul", because I'm very much against big companies suing their smaller competitors for frivolous reasons.
However, I got to thinking about the possible approach this guy took in developing his site and building his business. I also spent some time reading his blog.
It wouldn't surprise me if he developed and executed a script that scraped the eMove "helper" database and then used it as his own when launching his company/site. I don't know that that would provide grounds for eMove to keep him from using certain keywords, but I wonder if it would help establish a basis for eMove's claim (re: misappropriation of trade secrets).
There are four other companies ranking hire than eMove for the term "Moving Help". I suspect there must be something more compelling than the guy just being a member provider that has eMove acting against him.
In terms of the scraper content, here's just one example of the provider list from the same zip code search on the two sites:
https://www.movinghelp.com/results.aspx?Loc=Location1
https://www.hireahelper.com/GetQuote/HelperList.aspx?ZipCode=78613&Date=09-30-2008&CategoryID=1
Lots of similarity in the listings.
check out the "texas service company" listing... looks suspect to me just to get "uhaul" into their web copy.
From CEO of HireAHelper:
Again - We do not "scrape" content - or do any other "black hat" SEO tricks... our helpers insert all their own content. If they list themselves on both our sites, and use the same description, there is really nothing we can do about that.
Appreciate all the feedback! Keep it coming and digg this story up!
This one made me so mad I wrote another post about it.
When will people stop trying to use legal tactics to win marketing battles. And when will corporate lawyers learn trademark law?!!!!
From CEO of HireAHelper -
I don't suppose you could nofollow the eMove link could you Sarah? ;-)
Did someone checked both sites via the wayback machine ?
Emove :
https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.emove.com
HireAHelper :
https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.hireahelper.com
Me i think the main issue here is the scrapped content question.
In my opinion it seems U-Haul has no case. If someone is more creative and offers a better product then they survive. Its standard economics. U-Haul is a dinosaur and deserves to go extinct.
it's a no-brainer why HireAHelper is winning the ranking race ......
even the most basic of SEO reports shows that HireAHelper learnt how to build a better website, while he was studying (and trying to earn some income on emove.com).
Uhaul/emove should just spent the legal costs on improving their own website. if they can squeeze HireAHelper out of the search race, it'll be a longer, slower demise.
But this case is not REALLY about who is ranking better. However, he who optimises better should win the court case. I hope the residing judge is somehow related to a Google employee.
I think this is pretty wrong. If uHaul wins this case, a lot of "you are not allowed to use this text on your website"-cases will be coming :)
Wow, this is crazy. Hireahelper doesn't even seem to be doing much of the same thing. I thought hireahelper was not merely for movers but also for any kind of job. Let me first say that I'm not trying to play the "wheelchair card," but I was really looking forward to the access of having "helpers" come and rake my lawn - I am confined to a wheelchair and can't do that myself. Also maybe at some point - hire a "helper" to help clean my house, dishes, etc.
What is America coming to when a business can't offer more than merely moving to people who need it?! Come on Uhaul - is this site really moving in on you? I think they were bringing a great new thing to the table!
One last thing... this breach of contract basically creates a law where anyone who uses this kind of technology or takes part in life on the internet can never work to improve the system. It's not like he's stealing some secret idea - everyone knows how these things work but a SELDOM FEW can really figure out how to improve it and actually get it done.
So good work Mr. Glanz and yours... they may attempt to steal your hard work (which is SAD) but they can't steal your brilliant mind or determination!!
Uhaul - PLEASE DROP THIS... you're hurting the little guys! PLEASE let me be able to hire a helper to do yard work since I can't do it myself! It is a need - and if you (Uhaul) sue Hireahelper and come out with this on YOUR site I will boycott it!
Can anyone do anything to help these guys??
In need of a helper,
Victoria
Great post, nasty lawsuite.
I think we should all start a major campaign to nofollow link to hireahelper.com with the keywords "moving helper" and "moving helpers."
It is truly ridiculous that UHaul would attempt to trademark such phrases. Thanks for the very interesting post.
I was thinking along the exact same lines as you Jac. If Michael Glanz was smart enough to create a sound structure and quickly move to the top of the SERPS then he is also hopefully smart enough to get a large following of people supporting, "The little guy".
The publicity could help make or break his case but it could also result in his website ranking for the trademarked terms with or without them being on the website in the fashion that they currently are found.
This should be interesting to watch none the less.
being on the client side most of the time...
UHaul has registered those trademarks.
FYI..
Moving Help Affiliate AgreementPlease read the Moving Help Affiliate Agreement below and click I agree to begin the sign up process.
Moving Help Affiliate AgreementMoving Help - Moving Helper Agreement
i think it's pretty clear...
Er, ok. It's clear that they're trying to strongarm marketing with shaky legal claims. I'll buy that.
Wow ... so Uhaul can't rank so they sue. I like this new form of SEO. I am going to fire my team and start hiring lawyers.
Too late, I already hired some. You LOSE, SUCKER!!!!!
Haha good point, i wanna be at the top for internet marketing, going to the trademark office today. I shoudl be able to fill up the first page of results. The savings in PPC alone will justify the retainers. :)
This sounds like a classic case of David verses Goliath. Let's just hope David wins. It appears that a small company has come along and is providing better service and the bigger company, by comparison, is sloppy. Instead of improving, U-haul is just wielding whatever weapon it takes to knock David out.
Sara,
If Uhaul wins I am going th trade mark a, this, and the so no website will read well.
I am in total agreement with this statement.
-- Both HireAHelper and MovingHelp.com pay their service providers by having customers give the mover an "authorization code" which then allows the site to release monies to the mover. There may be more to this story than meets the eye.--
I agree.
I am a moving service provider. I'm listed on both. I have been on Uhaul's site since 2003. I have had many problems with Uhaul (an understatement). They are terribly run and almost completely unresponsive to real problems. I'm not the only complainer - Uhaul offers a service provider-only message board with hundreds of complaints listed.
That said, a boycott sounds horrible to me. Should it be successful, a boycott will mostly financially damage the service providers who are listed on Emove. While Emove must make a ton of money, Emove is still at best a tertiary source of income for Uhaul. We are going into the slow season (winter), the economy is horrible, and it's absolutely the slowest it's been in many years for us. A boycott could simply put many service providers out of business without denting Uhaul's deep pockets.
Most of my clients get offered my services when they rent a truck with Uhaul, not by doing a google search. While I wish HireaHelper the best of luck (and hope they win the suit), it's such a small company, most people will never hear of it. If Emove were to disappear today, people would hire untrained labor on Craigslist or the local Home Depot first.
ps-HireAhelper keeps the same percentage as Uhaul (15 percent), but tacks on an extra $50 service charge ( more or less), which the service providers never sees a cent from. this is not disclosed to customers.
This makes it less competitive than emove. I don't think most potential clients want to pay that extra cost when many of the same companies are listed on both sites. But HireAMover actually answers their phones, unlike emove. I think emove.com changed their name to movinghelp.com to be in a better position to go after the little guys.
Does the actual answering of telephones not justify a service charge?
Copyright infringement attorney’s this would be the perfect time to take on a pro-bono case, anyone available? I really hate to let the Goliath win in this case, especially if Mike can win with the proper resources….hmmmm…. maybe, www.helphireahelperbeatuhaul.com?
Pods just owned Uhauls ass though glad Pods didn't back down
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[removed link]
At a first glance, you are tempted to look at it with the "David vs Goliath" perspective. This ,undoubtedly, clouds vision and judgement.
The copyright infringement case was NOT based on the keywords and outranking alone, but I can imagine that was the very thing that caught there attention.
Not only did Mike Glanz use their registered trademark in the beginning, his whole system was identical to MovingHelp.com in the following aeas:
(1) Moving Labor Industry
(2) User Interface was Identical in Function and Purpose
(the user selects city, date and services needed (load or unload) and a list of providers come up according to the input)
(3)Communication Method between admin, service providers and customers were identical in Function and Purpose
(This can be demonstrated with Hire a Helpers use of what was called a "payment code". This "payment code" was the way customers and service providers communicated to Moving Help that the order was complete and they (Company) can release payment to the provider)
I am sure there were more "similarities", but these alone did make for a good claim from Uhaul since there are other companies who:
(a)Provide the Same Services as Hire a Helper and Uhaul Moving Help
(b)Use a different web interface (although they are similiar in purpose they differ in user interaction)
(c)Different communication method between company, service provider and customer.
The lack of the websites originality in many areas constituted a valid claim from Uhaul, especially when in all these areas reflected the way MovingHelp does business in those same area.
In 2011, this case was settled. The company, Hire a Helper, ended up losing; they now have to pay Uhaul Moving Help and undisclosed amount for an indefinite amount of time. A quick look at Hire a Helpers website does now show a lot of differences in operation now, here is one in the area of pricing:
Unlike movinghelp, they add $50 to the total of every order (different pricing model).
Like movinghelp, they then deduct 15% of the total cost of the order for their commission.
(Source https://www.hireahelper.com/sign-up/, terms and agreement: section 7. Standard Payment and Reviews; Uhaul Public Relations via Newswire: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/movinghelpcom-uses-lawsuit-to-put-an-end-to-competitors-misuse-of-trademark-and-intellectual-property-104530219.html)
It's alright though - I reckon they can put the genie back in the bottle - it's not like anyone else on the internet is using their 'trademarks'.
Sarah - I might have asked this before, but is there anything a company can do to make a trademark stronger? You say that registering it is not enough and a judge can subsequently rule it invalid... I thought the process of determining if it was generic etc. was carried out at registration time. What can you do to be more sure? Sue yourself?
We have a (UK) tm on Distilled for example which is clearly just an English word... I'm not too worried, more intrigued.
They should have their attorney file a counter threat to invalidate their trademark. I did it, and cost $75. I won.
Uhual is nothing more then a sue happy company i will be next but we are also filing for there unethical practices on movinghelp.com hireahelper.com never once even looked like nor acted like movinghelp.com it might have been the no compete clause all it did was make the fees higher for hah. Like i said me and movinghelp.com are going to go at it anyone who has ever dealt with Uhual knows they are bullies and quite frankly suck. There ceo did some publicity stunt giving out his phone number but it didn't work today stay clear of movinghelp.com and if you have kids don't use collegeboxes.com another rip off company owned by uhual
I think uHaul feels that not only has its "Move Helper" TM been infringed, its unusual payment process has also been copied. Both HireAHelper and MovingHelp.com pay their service providers by having customers give the mover an "authorization code" which then allows the site to release monies to the mover. There may be more to this story than meets the eye.
Thanks for the post. It reminds me to deal with my misspelled registered mark that has been used by a competitor. I am going to hire a lawyer today!
Uhaul may have a lawsuit filed but I don't really see the validity of stopping someone from using words in their meta tags. I mean could I be sued for linking to his site with the anchor text "moving helper"?
Yes, but you are basing that assumption on the judge knowing and understanding what a metatag is, which probably is not very likely. This is why laws are so vague when it comes to the internet because they just don't understand it.
For that matter; will U-Haul go after anyone using those terms directly on their website? Will they go after ANYONE and EVERYONE for linking to this guy using those terms? They may have deep pockets but can they really stop everything with such general terms?
U-Haul's move seems altogether suspect to me. Glanz and company seem to have every right to engage as they have and U-Haul, while they have every right to litigate at will (as they have), seems to have simply bumped into a smaller guy with a bigger brain. My guess is that this move, if it goes further public, will display U-Haul as an aging company, with little future, grasping for whatever they can to maitain the status quo.
good read. uHaul is just scared of a competition so they're trying to be the playground bully. the lawsuit seems to be without merit... i mean, trademarking "moving help"? that's ridiculous.
Pretty interesting post Sarah!
Now the thought of possible running into the same issue as HireAHelper, what would you suggest be the best method to prevent such frivolous actions from those with ends pockets?
Do I trademark high ranking keywords for my industry? Is it even worth the time and efforts and is this the next boom! Registering keyword trademarks, if it hasn't already started?
Two things strike me as odd about this post.
1. I was today, literally not 3 hours ago, looking through the members' ranks on here and thought 'Geez, we havent heard from Sarah in a while'... And here you are.
2. I am currently in the middle of a trademark application in Australia!
Coincidence? I think not!
But, in seriousness, like Sean, I am always for the little guy when it comes to these types of arguments but unlike Sean I dont think that U-Haul deserve any leniency in my anger towards them even if the guy did write said script. They should cop is sweet and do whatever they can to increase their rankings instead of dragging a poor bloke through the courts with every chance they will take him for all he's got.
But what if "all he's got" is based on him steeling that database information from the emove site? Was it ever really his to start with then?
I think what Sean is saying, and please correct me if I'm wrong, is that just suing him to get him out of the way is very much unfair and unwarranted, but if he did indeed steel information than wouldn't any company large or small sue the other?
I had the same "screw uhaul" reaction. However content scrapping WOULD be a tough one for me to back. Having been tempted to content scrap before for similar reason (getting a base platform) I can say it is VERY tempting.
That said, hireahelper is a lot nicer looking =P.
Yeah thats fair. I agree with that. When it comes to actually, physically copying content / data that simply does not belong to you or taking anything that doesnt belong to you, justice needs to be done. I think as most people said, I was quick to jump on the anti-haul-wagon (trailer?) but in hindsight I can see a fair case if that is what he is being pulled up for.
From CEO of HireAHelper -
In response to a couple people who said we may have "scraped" their site.
In actuality we spent thousands and thousands of dollars developing our own site/design from scratch. The helpers that we have listed on our site that are listed on their site as well are just "customers" that have chosen to use both our "products". We are in competition! Of course we are going to have the same customers!
Someone mentioned boycotting uHaul - uHauls company is emove.com (otherwise known as MovingHelp.com) - our company is HireAHelper.com.
Great post Sarah!
Seriously - this is ridiculous! I think everyone would agree that UHaul is out of line to come out swinging against a smaller but perfectly legitimate company over some trumped up charges. What's worse is the lengths UHaul is going to completely shut down HireAHelper. If anything, it proves to me that Michael Glanz is really on to something and is offering a much better service (almost a weird compliment to his management and services that he has caught the eye of such a big company, though I'm sure he can do without this headache). Seriously though, isn't competition a trademark of capitalism??
Go HireAHelper!!