Google Wins Lawsuit Over Monetizing Your Name With Ads

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Google has won a lawsuit filed by Wisconsin woman, Beverly Stayart, over Google Instant suggestions leading to a search result set that had ads.

Beverly Stayart claimed Google suggested a search query phrase for the term [Bev Stayart levitra]. When you landed on that page of search results, Google would show search ads for Levitra and other treatments for erectile dysfunction. Beverly Stayart sued Google for using her name to make money without her approval.

The U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago dismissed the case and said Google was not liable. District Judge Lynn Adelman said that the connection between the name and the commercial interest was incidental and it had to be substantial for her to win in court. Adelman added that Google received no substantial benefit for her name being associated with the query that triggered the ad.

I believe this is the same woman who sued Yahoo in 2009 for showing spam pages for her name — oh, she lost that case, as well.

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Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry can be followed on Twitter here.