More on Law Firms and Competitive Keyword Ads–Nicolet Law v. Bye, Goff

This is another lawsuit between personal injury law firms over competitive keyword ads. The plaintiff is Nicolet Law, based in Hudson, Wisconsin with 14 offices in Wisconsin and Minnesota. The defendant is the Bye, Goff firm, based in River Falls, Wisconsin with other in-state offices. Some of Bye, Goff’s keyword ads:

I would like to know more about why Bye, Goff titled the ads this way. It reminds me of the Porta-Fab case. However, note that Nicolet Law, a surname, isn’t registered with the USPTO and there may be questions about its secondary meaning. The court says the plaintiff’s allegations sufficed for now.

Regarding the likelihood of confusion, the defendant had this retort:

the offending ads were online for at most two days, during which there were no more than six “click-throughs” by only three unique users, one of whom had to be Nicolet discovering the Google Ads and the second of whom had to be Nicolet’s counsel conducting a good faith investigation of the claims.

The court says this rejoinder has to wait until summary judgment. However, if it’s anywhere close to true, this will be another impressive entry into the annals of financially unjustified and irrational lawsuits over competitive keyword ads.

Kudos to Nicolet Law for surviving the motion to dismiss, but I’m wondering if it will ultimately regret filing this lawsuit–either because its trademark gets busted or because it made a federal case out of nothing.

For more background on competitive keyword advertising by lawyers, see this article.

Case citation: Nicolet Law Office S.C. v. Bye, Goff && Rohde, Ltd., 2023 WL 3340214 (W.D. Wis. May 10, 2023)

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