RockStrongo
Junior Member
I have a company in Florida and for the sake of anonymity, let's say I sell widgets. So my company is called Widget Express and back in 2009, I hired an SEO company to optimize my website. What it seems like they were doing is finding direct competitors and using their names in the title and tags of videos they posted.
There is a huge franchise in my industry that has been around for ages and I received a C&D with list two pages long of video sites where their name, "Widgets Fast" is used. They have the name Widgets Fast trademarked and I viewed some of the videos posted, and they were VERY misleading. Most of them tried to portray my company as Widgets Fast, rather than using them in a creative way or in the ad copy. One of them even said, "Widgets Fast Florida".
Here's the list of problems I have and I'm hoping someone here can give me a little advice.
1. The SEO company is no longer in business (go figure) and when I was finally able to reach the owner, he stated that he no longer had any of the username/passwords for any of their clients. Therefore we can't login and remove the videos ourselves.
2. It's virtually impossible to contact the video websites to ask them to remove the video since there is no proof it was for us. We have sent numerous requests to remove the videos or to provide the username/password. All requests have been ignored.
3. This company WILL sue...there's no doubt about it. I'm a small business owner in a small economy and having to dish out money for an attorney will shut me down. But my hands are tied because I can't cease and desist from something I have absolutely no control over.
Please help, I have no idea how to deal with this or even try to make things right. The SEO company got me ranked fast, but I never in a million years thought they were using illegal methods to get me ranked.
There is a huge franchise in my industry that has been around for ages and I received a C&D with list two pages long of video sites where their name, "Widgets Fast" is used. They have the name Widgets Fast trademarked and I viewed some of the videos posted, and they were VERY misleading. Most of them tried to portray my company as Widgets Fast, rather than using them in a creative way or in the ad copy. One of them even said, "Widgets Fast Florida".
Here's the list of problems I have and I'm hoping someone here can give me a little advice.
1. The SEO company is no longer in business (go figure) and when I was finally able to reach the owner, he stated that he no longer had any of the username/passwords for any of their clients. Therefore we can't login and remove the videos ourselves.
2. It's virtually impossible to contact the video websites to ask them to remove the video since there is no proof it was for us. We have sent numerous requests to remove the videos or to provide the username/password. All requests have been ignored.
3. This company WILL sue...there's no doubt about it. I'm a small business owner in a small economy and having to dish out money for an attorney will shut me down. But my hands are tied because I can't cease and desist from something I have absolutely no control over.
Please help, I have no idea how to deal with this or even try to make things right. The SEO company got me ranked fast, but I never in a million years thought they were using illegal methods to get me ranked.