Remember the Taxes.com suit? The site had factual information that criticized one of its competitors, information that was valuable enough that it generated lots of inbound links, which gave it tons of googlejuice, so when you searched for "J.K. Harris" (the competitor's trademarked business name) you got taxes.com in the first results page.
So J.K. Harris sued taxes.com for violating its trademarks, and what's worse, they won — the initial court held that factual information that contains trademarks was in violation of trademark law.
Luckily, human discourse was saved yesterday when the court changed its mind and ruled that facts don't violate trademarks. EFF filed an amicus brief on Taxes.com's behalf, and the court's findings drew heavily from the arguments we raised.
"The court's decision to reverse an earlier ruling on Taxes.com restores the balance between trademark law and the First Amendment right to publish truthful information," said EFF Senior Intellectual Property Attorney Fred von Lohmann…
In its revised ruling, the court embraced EFF's arguments, holding that using a competitor's name in the course of conveying truthful information does not violate trademark law. The ruling pointed out that: "While the evidence submitted to the Court demonstrates that Defendants' web site does contain frequent references to J.K. Harris, these references are not gratuitous; rather, Defendants' web site refers to J.K. Harris by name in order to make statements about it."
