1-800 Contact Inc. is an American contact lens retailer based in Draper, Utah. The brands used 1-800 Contacts include Johnson & amp; Johnson Vision Care, Ciba Vision, Bausch & amp; Lomb and CooperVision. In 2006, the last year as a public company, the company reported net sales of US $ 247 million.
Video 1-800 Contacts
History
1-800 Contact was founded in 1995 by Jonathan C. Coon and John F. Nichols, and was founded in February of that year. The Company entered into an IPO in 1998 on the NASDAQ with a CTAC symbol with an offer price of $ 27.5 million and a stock price of $ 12.50. They acquired Lens Express in 2002.
Over the years, 1-800 Contacts have been owned by several companies. In June 2007, 1-800 contacts were acquired by Fenway Partners for $ 24.25 per share. As of June 2012, 1-800 Contacts are sold to WellPoint. In 2013 Wellpoint sold 1-800 Contacts to Thomas H. Lee Partners and glasses.com to Luxottica. AEA investors acquire a majority at 1-800 Contacts in December 2015.
In 2008, 1-800 Contacts entered into a partnership with Walmart to integrate mobile and Internet orders for contact lenses with ophthalmologist services and operations at Walmart stores, Agreement expires in 2013. In June 2013, 1-800 Contacts launched eyeglasses. com, a domain owned by the company since 1999.
Maps 1-800 Contacts
Brand awareness
Using a toll-free number as a brand, consumers can recognize products, directed to call purchases, and purchase products within minutes. It is expected that the consumer will more easily remember the phone number of the company, and thus more likely to become a regular customer. 1800Contacts.com is also a domain name owned by the company where customers can order online. The combined toll-free and domain-matching numbers are called "Toll Free Domains" or "Teledotcom".
Legal Charges
Demands WhenU
1-800 sued WhenU contacts via pop-up ads in 2002. In a lawsuit against WhenU, also named Vision Direct as a joint defendant, 1-800 contact alleged that the advertisement provided by WhenU, which advertises a 1-800 contender Contacts such as Vision Direct) when people view a company's website, as "inherently cheating" and one that "misleads users to wrongly trust pop-up ads provided by WhenU.com is in the fact that ads are authorized by and derived with the underlying Website".
In December 2003, Judge Deborah Batts of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York gave a preliminary injunction, prohibiting WhenU to send advertisements to several web surfers, arguing that it was a trademark infringement in violation of Lanham Law. WhenU appealed, and the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit stated that the actions of WhenU are not the same as the "use" demanded by the Lanham Act to be a trademark infringement.
The appeals court overturned an initial court order and ordered the dismissal of all claims made by 1-800 Contacts based on trademark infringement, leaving a claim under unfair competition and copyright infringement. The district court has found that 1-800 Contacts probably will not win in claims of copyright infringement, finding that "the behavior does not infringe the plaintiff's right to display its copyright website, or its right to create derivative works from it."
The Electronic Frontier Foundation criticized the case, stating that it "does not help [people] against adware and spyware" but rather is intended to allow companies "to gain control of the [computer] desktop", where legal principles employed "will create precedent which will allow trademark owners to dictate what can be opened on your desktop when you visit their website ". At the time of the appeal, he proposed a brief amicus curiae urging the Court of Appeal to limit the reach of the "initial interest confusion" doctrine that had been applied by the District Courts.
In addition to the case of WhenU, 1-800 Contacts has engaged in other trademark infringement claims regarding the issue of keyword advertising. On March 8, 2010, 1-800 contacts sued Contact Lens King, Inc. for trademark infringement under the use of the trademark "1-800 CONTACTS" as keywords to trigger a sponsored ad that directs consumers to Lens King's website and Contacts product.
Lens.com demands
1-800 Contact was also involved in several lawsuits against Lens.com, Inc., including a case of trademark cancellation in the US Court of Appeals for Federal Circuit, Lens.com, Inc. v. 1-800 Contacts, Inc. , whereby the Court determined that the Lens.com trademark " LENSA ", held in conjunction with "computer software", had been abandoned because Lens.com only used software to sell contact lenses over the internet, while consumers have no relationship between trademark and computer software.
In 2013, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals states that Lens.com did not infringe trademarks when purchasing search ads using the Federal registered trademark CONTACTS 1800 as 'keyword'. In August 2016, the Federal Trade Commission filed an administrative complaint against 1-800 Contacts alleging, inter alia, that the practice of enforcing trademarks of its search advertising had non-negotiable competition violating the FTC Act. 1-800 Contact has denied all errors and is scheduled to appear before an FTC administrative judge in April 2017.
DITTO and FTC lawsuits
On April 17, 2013, the Electronic Frontier Foundation claims that 1-800 Contacts abusing patent law by acting like a patent troll in its lawsuit against DITTO. In a blog post, the EFF accused 1-800 Contacts of "leveraging the huge cost of patent litigation to extinguish the competition" and called on his followers to help DITTO by using previous sources.
On August 8, 2016, the Federal Trade Commission filed an administrative complaint charging 1-800 contacts, the largest online contact lens retailer in the United States, unlawfully drafted a network of anti-competitive agreements with online competitors' contact lenses that suppressed competition in online search advertising auctions certain and which restrict honest internet advertising â € <â € According to administrative complaints, 1-800 Contacts enter into bidding agreements with at least 14 competing online contact lens retailers who eliminate competition in the auction to place ads on search results pages generated by online search engines like Google and Bing. The complaint states that these bidding agreements are unreasonable to withstand price competition in internet search auctions, and restrict honest advertisements â € <â € In a preliminary decision entered on 27 October 2017, and announced on October 30, 2017, Chief Justice of Administrative Judge D. Michael Chappell corroborated a Federal Trade Commission complaint against 1-800 Contacts, ruled that the FTC has proved that the nation's largest online contact lens retailer unauthorized set up a network of anti-competition agreement with online competitors contact lens lenses. Judge Chappell's order included with the original decision will prohibit 1-800 Contacts agree with the marketer or seller of any contact lens product to limit, ban, organize or limit the seller's participation in the search ad auction, and will also check 1-800 Contacts from instruct search engines to restrict or ban the use of any keyword by the seller (words or phrases used to instruct search engines to display certain search ads), or require sellers to use negative keywords (words or phrases used to instruct search engines to not showing certain search ads). Also under orders, 1-800 Contacts will be prohibited from agreeing to sellers to restrict, prohibit, regulate, or otherwise restrict the use of sellers against infringing advertising, advertising, deceptive, and non-infringing trademarks. The order also requires the company to stop enforcing or attempting to enforce any and all terms, conditions or conditions of any existing agreement or court order imposing a provision on the seller inconsistent with the order. Source of the article : Wikipedia
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