Personal injury law firm beats Lerner & Rowe's appeal in Google ad case
By Diana Novak Jones
Oct 22 (Reuters) -A federal appeals court on Tuesday sided with an Arizona personal injury law firm sued by rival Lerner & Rowe, which had claimed trademark infringement involving the purchase of Google ads.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s ruling that granted a bid by the Arizona firm, the Accident Law Group, for summary judgment in the trademark infringement lawsuit brought by Lerner & Rowe over ALG’s ads that appeared on Lerner & Rowe’s Google search results. Lerner & Rowe had accused ALG of attaching ads for its firm to search terms or "keywords" associated with Lerner & Rowe and siphoning off potential clients.
The appeals court said that despite Lerner & Rowe's "strong" trademark and its expenditure of more than $100 million on marketing in Arizona, data from Google and ALG showed that only a tiny fraction of people who called ALG about potential legal representation mentioned Lerner & Rowe and therefore may have been confused.
ALG, also known as Brown, Engstrand & Shely, has purchased Google Ad keywords on Lerner & Rowe’s Google search results since the firm’s founding in 2015, according to the opinion.
Lerner & Rowe, which has offices all over Arizona and in several other states around the country, sued ALG in Arizona federal court in 2021, alleging federal and state trademark infringement and unjust enrichment.
In 2023, U.S. District Judge David Campbell granted ALG’s bid for summary judgment, in part relying on data from ALG’s intake department, which said it received a little more than 200 phone calls from people who specifically mentioned “Lerner & Rowe.” In contrast, ALG’s ads appeared on “Lerner & Rowe” searches more than 109,000 times between 2017 and 2021, Campbell said.
The appeals court on Tuesday said that the district court was correct to conclude that the case was "one of the rare trademark infringement cases susceptible to summary judgment.
Maria Speth of Jaburg Wilk, one of the attorneys defending ALG, said in a statement that the appellate court “correctly vindicated Accident Law Group’s right to engage in key word advertising.”
Attorneys for Lerner & Rowe did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
U.S. Circuit Judge Roopali Desai concurred with the appeals court's unanimous decision but wrote a separate opinion urging the full 9th Circuit to consider whether bidding and purchasing on ad keywords constitute "use in commerce" under federal law, a necessary element to prove trademark confusion.
Reporting by Diana Jones
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