Bright Builders, a web company that provides web development, web hosting and SEO services has been found liable of contributory infringement for enabling the sale of counterfeit goods. Bright Builders set up the website, provided the hosting and did the SEO for Copycatclubs.com (website no longer exists), an online company that sold counterfeit golf equipment. 

The jury said that Bright Builders should have known and reported that Copy Cat Clubs was involved in illegal activity. Instead Bright Builder benefited from the counterfeiting activities of Copy Cat Clubs by charging money for building the website (the only sales channel) and providing SEO services to make sure that the website could be found by people looking for golf equipment.

Christopher Finnerty, a partner at Nelson Mullins, the law firm representing the plaintiff said, “The jury found that web hosts and SEO’s cannot rely solely on third parties to police their web sites and provide actual notice of counterfeit sales from the brand owners. Even prior to notification from a third party, Internet intermediaries must be proactive to stop infringing sales when they knew or should have known that these illegal sales were occurring through one of the web sites they host.”

The judge in the case also made an interesting choice in deciding how to punish Bright Builders and Copy Cat Clubs. The judge fined Bright Builders $770,000 for damages but only made Copy Cat Clubs pay $28,000 for their crimes. Basically, the judge thinks that Bright Builders caused the plaintiff in the case more damage than Copy Cat Clubs, the actual brain child of the operation.

This trial set a precedent and is sending a very clear message to the Internet marketing community: Society expects all businesses to be responsible for anti-counterfeiting. Businesses have an obligation to be involved in anti-counterfeiting efforts and stop illicit trade if you know it is happening.

Have an opinion about ethics and anti-counterfeiting?

Then you should write about it and be a guest blogger for The Anti-Counterfeiting Blog.  Please write to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it with your topic idea. – Blog posts written by guest bloggers will include the author's name and a link to the author's company website.