Jews for Jesus v. Google Lawsuit Settles

August 8, 2006 · by · in Search Engines, Trademark

By Eric Goldman

Jews for Jesus v. Google, Inc., 05-CV-10684 (SDNY voluntary dismissal filed July 26, 2006)

You may recall the lawsuit filed by Jews for Jesus against Google in December. The lawsuit involved a BlogSpot user who created a gripe site at jewsforjesus.blogspot.com. Jews for Jesus then sued Google for trademark infringement based on the use of its trademark as the third level domain name. Normatively, there were a lot of good reasons why this lawsuit should not succeed. However, descriptively, the law is sufficiently unclear that it was not possible to confidently predict an outcome. As a result, this case had the possibility of setting some important new precedent.

Instead, the parties have settled their dispute, filing a dismissal with prejudice on July 26. The official notice did not reveal any terms, but according to an announcement on the Jews for Jesus site, the user who registered the third level domain “had a change of heart.” As a result, the blog has transferred to Jews for Jesus. This transfer has wiped out all of the old griping content. Plus, there is nothing in the Internet Archive either, and Google’s cache has been wiped too. So it appears that Jews for Jesus has done a pretty effective job of shutting down this griper.