Older website impersonating our company

[joazito]

For a couple years a website has taken part of our company name and is online pretending to be us, owned by a "friend". Since our company didn't have a website, I figured "well he's doing us a service", until I found out they don't supply our email address and are receiving emails with business orders and not forwarding them to us.
We are a Portuguese company, called "Casa Ermelinda Freitas - Vinhos Ltd". The guy's website is at CasaErmelinda.com. Last week we put our own website online, at ErmelindaFreitas.pt, but google searches go to the guy's domain.

What can we do?

[tke71709]

Do you have a trademark?

Are they actively pretending to be your company or are they just using a similar domain name?

[joazito]

Do you have a trademark?

We do, but only in Portugal (European Union is pending).

Are they actively pretending to be your company or are they just using a similar domain name?

They're actively pretending to be our company.

[Dan Grossman]

Have you talked to them/him at all about your issue with what's going on? Are they unwilling to start operating under their own name?

[joazito]

Have you talked to them/him at all about your issue with what's going on? Are they unwilling to start operating under their own name?

We did, he says the responsible for the site is someone he doesn't control (I'm guessing his webdesigner) and he "can't make changes". He says we need to contact this person and work out some monetary arrangement to get things more to our taste.

We would just like this thing off the internet.

[Dan Grossman]

Check out ICANN's trademark policy and find out whether you qualify to dispute the name there. Then contact this person that does control the site and talk to them. It'll cost you less time and money if you can convince someone to work with you voluntarily than if you have to try to fight a legal battle against someone.

[dev_cw]

There are two issue here. 1) on the site they claim to be fabricator of the wine "Casa Ermelinda Freitas" which they are not (as you say). You should be able to win this argument anywhere, maybe even contact their hosting provider and explain the situation. I think that they can run the site as long as they don't claim to be you. Don't they need to buy the wine from you in the first place? Just stop selling to them and they will no longer be able to supply their customers.

2) that they show up in search engines before you...well that is not a problem but a reality. This site has more content and has been online much longer than your site. You could invest in a agressive SEO plan to get YOUR site to be #1.

You have two choices, deal with the offender and try to get them to change their site. Or build up your online presence and drown them out, contact all the distributors and let them know the you are the real source for the product.

Anyway, looks like you will have some work ahead of you. Good luck.

[tke71709]

Sounds to me like you have lots of grounds to go after this guy.

If he won't take the site down or remove the misleading statements then I would get in touch with a lawyer.

[joazito]

Thanks for all the replies. As far as I know he doesn't sell our product, but the whole thing is very misleading to ordinary people.