Yelp Can Sue Reputation Company For Promising To Suppress Bad Reviews

Yelp can pursue a lawsuit accusing a reputation management company of fraudulently advertising its ability to remove "bad" reviews from the business review website. From a report: In a decision late Thursday night, U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco said Yelp can pursue trademark infringement and unfair competition claims against ReviewVio, which operates as Dandy. Yelp said ReviewVio's ads, which include the Yelp logo, harmed its reputation by suggesting that businesses could pay for artificially inflated star ratings.

This allegedly undercut honest businesses that will not pay to remove negative reviews, and undermined the usefulness of Yelp's website to consumers. Yelp also said it lost ad revenue from businesses that paid for "review gating," which the company prohibits, or incorrectly believed that Yelp endorsed the practice.

So Yelp wants a monopoly?

[luvirini]

I mean on the ability to distort the review process so that companies can only pay Yelp the protection money to do such..

Quis Yelpiet ipsos Yelpes?

[Pseudonymous Powers]

I think I need a web of trust for my web of trust.

Re:

[LazarusQLong]

and of course, a web of trust for your web of trust... it is turtles all the way down.

Just dont use Yelp trademarks

[Anonymous Cward]

They can say their services will help remove fraudulent 1-star reviews from the ânumber 1 leading business review siteâ(TM) instead, just like old fashioned advertisers used to do to avoid infringing when claiming their washing powder was better than the competition!

Re: Just dont use Yelp trademarks

[reanjr]

Yeah, it sounds like everything they did is above board except for using their trademark. Maybe a TOS violation, but courts don't care about those unless there's a stipulated penalty and consideration.

Re:

[Lehk228]

it's not illegal to mention a competitor by name, it's just bad business because a major purpose of TV ads is to put the name of the brand or product in your head so it seems familiar/trustworthy when you see it in the store. mentioning a competitor gives them that benefit for free, plus the obvious clout that someone else is comparing to them

Sales pitch to merchants from reviewvio.com

[rtfa0987]

"With our proprietary technology, we
REMOVE negative content online from major review sites such as Google, Facebook, Tripadvisor
PREVENT 90% of new negative reviews from occurring and
CAPTURE new positive reviews for over 1,000 businesses across the U.S. and Canada

"Our legal team prepares legal letters for each piece of negative content on Google, Facebook and more. Each letter is carefully crafted to produce the desired result - get the review removed! After some negotiation with the review company, the reviews are removed permanently from your page and we monitor the page moving forward!"