The Connecticut Law Tribune has a current article about the law firm Stratton and Faxon suing Google over the rights to their name. A marketing firm working on behalf of Silver, Golub & Teitell, a Stamford based law firm, apparently bought the adwords. The article reports that Michael Stratton has said they are “going to sue Google and ... ask the Connecticut Bar Association for an ethics opinion.”

The article states, “The Stratton Faxon complaint against Google alleges tortious interference with a business relationship, violation of the Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices Act, and unjust enrichment, on grounds that Google pays nothing for selling the Stratton Faxon name.”

It is an interesting approach to an ongoing legal issue. Last year, Ars Technical had an article about Rescuecom, a computer repair firm which sued Google in 2004 “for allowing competitors to purchase advertisements that would appear when a user conducted a search for the keyword ‘rescuecom.’” That case was dismissed by a Federal Judge in 2006, been appealed and is now heading towards trial.

In that case, the Electronic Freedom Foundation filed a brief of Amicus Curiae in support of Google. In their introduction, they argue:

Submit the search term “McDonald’s” to Google’s search engine and among the “sponsored links” that appear in response you may encounter a link for “The Coalition of Immokalee Farm workers,” a community-based organization that supports the rights of low-wage workers in Florida. The Coalition was recognized recently in the national news for leading a successful boycott of the restaurant chain Taco Bell that resulted in improved wage and working conditions for tomato pickers in the Taco Bell supply chain… Recently, the Coalition turned its attention to McDonald’s practices and, as part of its public campaign for working condition and wage improvements, decided to purchase sponsored links on Google to help stimulate public debate and mobilize support.

This is an example of the important free speech activity that search engines help facilitate. It is also an example of the kind of Constitutionally-protected activity that would be disrupted were this Court to adopt the arguments urged by Appellant Rescuecom.

I strongly support the position of EFF on the Rescuecom case and believe their argument applies very well in the Stratton Faxon case. In April 2006, the advertising firm Warren Kremer Paino Advertising LLC brought a law suit against Lance Dutton of the “Maine Web Report”. Mr. Dutton had been publishing a series of articles criticizing Warren Kremer and the Maine Department of Tourism.

The Citizen Media Law Project reports that “Warren Kremer voluntarily dismissed the suit after a month, after facing extensive criticism on blogs and websites.” Part of that criticism was an adwords campaign that I purchased from Google. People searching on “Warren Kremer Paino Advertising” would find a paid advertisement for my blog which I described as “Orient Lodge: Poking fun at stupid advertising firms”. I wrote about the case in a blog post entitled The way life shouldn’t be.

While many much more notable bloggers wrote much more eloquently about the case, I would like to think that my blog post and Google Adwords campaign highlighting my blog added at least a little bit to the extensive criticism on blogs and websites that led Warren Kremer to voluntarily dismiss the suit.

Should cases like the Rescuecom case, the Stratton Faxon case prevail and several others that are emerging, I believe it will be part of further eroding of free speech online.

I am not a lawyer and certainly am in no position to file a brief in any of these cases. Instead, I am a blogger, so I’ll share my ideas here and hope that saner minds prevail in the cases being considered.

(Cross-posted at Digiday:Daily.)