J.K. Harris v. Kassel

Citation: J.K. Harris & Co. v. Kassel, 253 F.Supp.2d 1120 (N.D. Cal. 2003).

The court held that the defendant’s use of the business name of the Plaintiff, a competitor, on its website was a nominative fair use, despite the fact that the defendant made extensive use of the competitor’s name “by a) ‘creating keyword density’ using Plaintiff’s trade name and permutations thereof; b) creating ‘header Tags’ and ‘underline Tags’ around sentences that use Plaintiff’s trade name; c) using Plaintiff’s trade name as a ‘keyword’ in numerous areas of the web site; [and] d) using various ‘hot links’ to web sites with information about Plaintiff.”