Intellectual Property Law

Judge Throws Wrinkle Into Plastic Surgery Trademark Claim

By Ryan Singel, Kevin Poulsen, Sarah Lai Stirland, Kim Zetter, and David Kravets

A Michigan judge is dismissing a lawsuit brought by a plastic surgery firm against a web site that posted its readers' critical reviews of the firm's cosmetic services.

The suit by Lifestyle Lift Holding Inc. claimed infomercialscams.com of violating its trademarks because Lifestyle's trademarked name appeared on the URLs of infomercialscams.com.

Ruling from the bench, Judge Arthur Tarnow on Friday agreed with the defendant that infomercialscams.com was exercising free speech. Tarnow said the URLs did not confuse web users to mistakenly believe that the infomercialscams.com site was related to Lifestyle Lift Holding.

Many of the online complaints were from women who said they had a face-lift after seeing Lifestyle's infomercials. One woman claimed she lost hearing in one ear. Another said "every week my face proceeds to return to the way it was before the lift." Another said, "I feel ripped off."

The lawsuit was a bid to stifle free speech, according to Public Citizen, which defended the case.

"Their theory was that somebody might run on to this review site on Google, and that was confusion," said Paul Levy, a Public Citizen attorney. "That's why we have the First Amendment here."

Had the court ruled otherwise, Levy said, the decision would have given a green light to unhappy companies to invoke federal trademark law to limit speech it did not approve of.

Lifestyle, based in Michigan, licenses its name to cosmetic facial surgeons, who promote the trademarked name "lifestyle lift" for cosmetic surgery procedures performed in dozens of offices nationwide.

The company sued Justin Leonard, an Arizona man who runs the infomercialscams.com site. Lifestyle claimed Leonard's use of Lifestyles URLs violated its trademarks. The complaint, filed in the Eastern District of Michigan, said its surgeons have received "positive television coverage" on ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, UPN and WGN.

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Full post as published by Threat Level on May 05, 2008 (boomark / email).