Legal Research

Litigation - WI Law Firm Purchases Search Results for Another Firm's Name

A suit filed last week by Habush Habush & Rottier alleges that the firm of Cannon & Dunphy effectively hijacked the names and reputation of Habush attorneys by purchasing the keywords "Habush" and "Rottier" for its Internet search results.

From the Wisconsin Law Journal:

Until a day after the suit was filed, anyone who typed in the names Habush or Rottier on the popular search engine Google would see the home site for Cannon & Dunphy appear first.

According to the Associated Press, Cannon has acknowledged paying for the keywords but denied any wrongdoing, saying it was following a legal business strategy....

In the suit, Habush claims that Cannon violated the Wisconsin privacy law - Wis. Stat. 995.50(2)(b) - which states that someone's name or likeness cannot be used for advertising purposes without written consent from the individual.

Is this a big deal? Consider this from WTN News..."According to Google, 75 percent of Google users NEVER click past the first page. The top three Google results get 79 percent of all clicks. The remaining 7 results share just 21 percent of the clicks."

Full post as published by WisBlawg - From the UW Law Library on November 25, 2009 (boomark / email).