A federal district court judge in Chicago has allowed Jones Day to proceed in its ill-conceived lawsuit against Blockshopper.com, accusing the online real estate publication of trademark infringement
for having linked to the law firm's Web site.
But a copy of the decision that was made available this morning shows that the judge temporarily kept the case alive on narrow procedural
grounds. Federal district court judge John Darrah of Chicago ruled that dismissal wasn't legally appropriate at an early stage of the proceedings -- the case is only two months old -- because Jones
Day and Blockshopper disagree on the facts.
Crucially, they differ about whether it's possible that Web readers might have been confused by Blockshopper's links. So Darrah ruled that
Jones Day is entitled to have its day in court to try to prove its assertion that Blockshopper's links to the 2,300-lawyer mega-firm somehow led Web users to believe that Jones Day endorsed the site.
"It cannot be said, at this pleadings stage, that Jones Day's allegations of confusion are implausible," he wrote.
Darrah's wrong about that. It's completely unrealistic.
Regardless, the order now means that Jones Day needs to figure out how to prove that Web users didn't understand that online publications link to sites they're not affiliated with.
If
Jones Day really thinks it can find focus groups of otherwise rational people who will say they were confused by Blockshopper's links, the law firm is hopelessly out of touch with digital media.
Consider, other companies have had problems proving confusion in much closer cases. Geico, for instance, lost its lawsuit against Google when a court found the insurance company hadn't proven that consumers were
confused when they were served ads for rivals after typing "Geico" into Google's query box.
Meanwhile, the lawyers who run Jones Day really need to ask themselves what they hope to
accomplish by wasting everyone's time and resources by continuing to prosecute this case.