Last week the Court of Appeal of the State of California Sixth Appellate District dismissed claims from Carla Ison that Google and Yahoo infringed, diluted and misappropriated her name by allowing searches for it to generate “unauthorised” results.

 

Ison is the owner of the domain carlaisonphd.com, used for the official website of her clinical psychology practice. She purchased AdWord space for her name from Google and asked Yahoo to host her website in 2005. But she claimed search results on both engines linked to other clinical practices, shopping websites and universities.

 

The court of appeal concluded that her name failed to acquire a “secondary” meaning and was therefore not eligible for trademark protection.

 

“The combination of Ison’s personal name and .com is no more distinctive than is her personal name alone,” the court said.

 

Ison told TBO that she was disappointed that the "invalid" and "unreliable" survey evidence submitted by Yahoo was accepted by the courts.

 

Neither Google nor Yahoo responded to a request for comment at the time of publication.

 

(Source: TBO)