ELKHORN, Wisconsin- from www.walworthcountytoday.com – — A federal court has dismissed a lawsuit by an Elkhorn woman who complained that Web searches for her name returned links to porn sites.

In her suit, naming Yahoo, Alta Vista and Friendfinder.com as defendants, Beverly Stayart alleged that the search results violated her “right to control the use of her name with respect to commercial endorsement.”

She claimed the defendants “knowingly and intentionally used her name on the Internet without authorization.”

Stayart, a one-time VP for a financial firm in Chicago, according to court records, is frequently involved with animal protection issues, as well as geneology research.

So, she says, the searches infringe on the commercial value of her name.

But in an opinion released Aug. 28, 2009, Judge Rudolph T. Randa of the U.S. District Court dismissed the suit, writing “Stayart alleges that her name has commercial value, but it is clear that Stayart’s complaint arises from the distasteful association of her name with pornographic images, advertisements for sexual dysfunction drugs, and a sexually-oriented dating service.”

He also ruled that Yahoo was protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act for claims based on content created by third parties. “Yahoo did not create the offending content and did not exert any control over the third party websites where the alleged infringement occurred,” Randa wrote.