• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, February 11, 2009

News startup BlockShopper has agreed to revise the way it links to the law firm Jones Day to resolve a trademark infringement lawsuit.

The real estate news site will no longer use the law firm's name or individual attorneys' names as anchor text for hyperlinks, but will instead use the URL being linked to as the anchor text, according to BlockShopper co-founder Brian Timpone. In other words, instead of writing Malone is an associate in the Chicago office of global law firm Jones Day," BlockShopper will write "Malone (www.jonesday/malone) is an associate ..."

Timpone added that the site will immediately resume publishing stories about Jones Day lawyers' home purchases. Last year, BlockShopper agreed to hold off on stories about the firm's attorneys while the case was pending. "We're going to call more attention to them on our site than anyone else," he said.

Timpone said that he believes BlockShopper could have prevailed at trial, but that the 15-person company could not afford to continue litigating the matter. He estimated that the company had already spent more than $100,000 defending itself. "They're one of the largest law firms in the world," Timpone said. "We didn't have their resources and were never going to."

While the settlement largely requires Blockshopper to make a change in form rather than substance, it still disappoints digital rights advocates who had argued that Jones Day had no grounds for a lawsuit.

"The fact that they had to make any concession at all is mind-boggling, because this is a meritless case," said Paul Alan Levy, a lawyer with the consumer group Public Citizen.

Corynne McSherry, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, added: "They shouldn't have had to settle because the claims were ridiculous."

Jones Day sued Blockshopper last August, after the site posted articles about recent home purchases by Chicago associates Dan Malone, Jr. and Jacob Tiedt. The articles used the name "Jones Day" in the headlines and also linked to the lawyers' profile pages on the law firm's site.

The 2,300-lawyer firm alleged that the articles infringed on its trademark because they might have given readers the mistaken impression that Jones Day was affiliated with BlockShopper.

BlockShopper moved to dismiss the case and a host of civil rights groups, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Public Citizen, attempted to file a friend-of-the-court brief also urging dismissal.

In November, U.S. District Judge John Darrah in the Illinois northern district court declined to dismiss the case before trial. Darrah also refused to consider the brief filed by the digital rights advocates.

While the settlement doesn't create any binding precedent, digital rights lawyers said it might send a message to other companies that they can attempt to control how other sites create links. "One thing I would hate to see happen is for other trademark owners to get the notion that they should be demanding this," said the Electronic Frontier Foundation's McSherry.