Slashdot Mirror
Court Rules Against Woman Who Didn't Like Search Results
The Seventh Circuit Court has ruled that Beverly Stayart can't sue Yahoo! because she did not like what she saw on the results page after searching for her name. Stayart claimed that her "internet presence" was damaged by Yahoo! because results for a search of her name showed listings which included pharmaceuticals and adult oriented websites. The court disagreed. From the article: "Stayart had sued under Section 43(a) of the federal Lanham Act, which prohibits false advertising, false implications of endorsement, and so on. Her problem was that a Lanham Act claim requires a showing that the plaintiff has a 'commercial interest' to protect, and Stayart did not have a commercial interest in her own name."
I think her complaint is with Yahoo.
If you RTFA(I know, I know) she sued both Yahoo and Google, but they haven't tossed the google case out of court yet.
A "commercial interest" is not just whatever someone thinks it is. To maintain an action under the Lanham Act you must meet the definition of a "commercial interest" as used/implied by the Act. The court tells you what that means in the opinion.
Stayart’s argument hinges on the claim that by virtue
of her extensive activities, her name has commercial
value. These include: humanitarian efforts on behalf of
baby seals, wolves and wild horses; what she describes
as “scholarly posts” on a website; two poems that
appear on a Danish website; and genealogy research.
To determine whether a person or entity has standing
under 43(a), we look at whether they have “a reasonable
interest to protect” in a commercial activity. Dovenmuehle,
871 F.2d at 700; accord Stanfield v. Osborne Ind., Inc.,
52 F.3d 867, 873 (10th Cir. 1995). Indeed, standing to
assert a 43 claim is limited to a “purely commercial class
of plaintiffs.” Berni v. Int. Gourmet Rest. of Am., 838 F.2d
642, 648 (2d Cir. 1988) (quotation omitted). While
Stayart’s goals may be passionate and well-intentioned,
they are not commercial. And the good name that a person
garners in such altruistic feats is not what 43 of
the Lanham Act protects: it “is a private remedy for a
commercial plaintiff who meets the burden of proving
that its commercial interests have been harmed by a
competitor.” Made in the USA Found., 365 F. 3d at 281
(quotation and brackets omitted). We addressed a
similar scenario in Dovenmuehle where we held that,
under the Lanham Act, relatives who had no commercial
interest in their family name did not have a
reasonable interest to protect in the trade name
“Dovenmuehle, Inc.,” and thus lacked standing to sue.
Dovenmuehle, 871 F.3d at 700.
Court opinions are not black boxes. If you want to know why the Judge decided a certain way then read the opinion. It will tell you everything you need to know about that very specific case. If you want to know about "but what ifs" you'll have to look at other cases or look to dicta. Courts don't go on long tangents of hypotheticals.
There really is no comparison. The images of Milano were copyrighted and being distributed without permission. There were no images of Stayart herself, copyrighted or otherwise; just that a search for her name returned unrelated links to porn.
There is no irony, or even contradiction. Two completely different issues.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal