Court: Buying A Personal Name As A Keyword For Advertising Is Not A Publicity Rights Violation

from the good-result,-bad-ruling dept

We've covered tons of lawsuits where companies were sued over claimed trademark infringement for buying ads based on trademarked keywords. While there are still some such lawsuits under way, for the most part, the courts have made it clear that just buying ads on a trademarked keyword is not a trademark violation. However, in the ever changing world of so-called "intellectual property" laws, things change all the time. We've been noting the dangerous rise of a hodgepodge of questionable state laws that create "publicity rights" for individuals, and now we've got a case where someone was sued for buying keyword advertising based on someone's name, with the plaintiff claiming that this was a privacy rights violation. The good news: the court didn't buy it and dismissed the lawsuit. The bad news, the court seemed confused and the reasoning isn't great. Eric Goldman explains:
The legal novelty of the ruling makes it an important early precedent, but the opinion is not especially persuasive. To me, the judge seemed overwhelmed by both the challenging legal doctrines and technology at issue in this case. In response, the judge issued one of the most citation-free opinions of its length that I have ever seen. This is not a scholarly opinion, and that makes less likely to influence other courts. It also means that an appellate court will likely give this opinion relatively low deference.

The fact that the court dismissed the lawsuit is, on its face, good news for both search engines and advertisers. However, I thought the judge's arguments were questionable and, at least at one crucial juncture, internally inconsistent. The ruling turned on a specific word in the Wisconsin publicity rights statute, and courts applying other statutes can easily distinguish this opinion if they want to rule for the plaintiffs. Therefore, this ruling could morph from a defense win into a plaintiff's friend depending on how future courts rely on and interpret it.
I'm sure we'll start to see more such lawsuits pretty soon, and hopefully some better, clearer rulings in response.
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Filed Under: ads, keywords, publicity rights
Companies: amazon


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  1. icon
    JustMe (profile), 14 Jun 2011 @ 4:29am

    Interesting

    Interesting. I'd like to see some of the lawyers chime in on this one in the comments.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. icon
    JustMe (profile), 14 Jun 2011 @ 1:34pm

    Well...

    Looks like nobody cared about this one, Mike.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    Geld, 22 Jul 2011 @ 9:55pm

    New insight

    That is new insight for me. but, whether using personal name like "Bill Gate" also violate of Publicity Rights if it is used to sell Microsoft products

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. identicon
    Sapuluh, 26 Nov 2011 @ 6:19am

    hemm i dont know about this

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. identicon
    Jason Gray, 25 Jun 2012 @ 6:50am

    Tough

    All I know is when it comes to suing someone about privacy violation it can be hard to prove if you're the plaintiff.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  6. identicon
    las vegas free picks, 5 Dec 2012 @ 1:25am

    seo

    That is new insight for me.hemm i dont know about this

    link to this | view in thread ]


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