That only holds true in cases where an actual human is reading the résumés which have been submitted. Many businesses, particularly large multi-nationals, rely on software to reduce the pool of 100s of applicants down to a handful, not allowing even an unqualified HR person to make a call whether to move a résumé forward. The last time I hired an assistant, the automated HR system eliminated every highly-qualified candidate that I had personally recommended for the position, leaving me with 6 candidates who had no real-world qualifications but were capable of putting the right buzzwords on their application. I ended up in a protracted fight with HR that was resolved by a VP granting permission to hire out-of-scope, just to get a qualified candidate for the job.

As I've said elsewhere in the thread, it can be supposed from the case that the plaintiff's attorneys were attempting to broaden (or modernize, depending on your viewpoint) the definition of "commercial interest" with regard to Lanham-related issues. Doing so could protect individuals from exactly this kind of abuse by non-related commercial interests.

A good point. I was looking more at "commercial interest" in a broad form, not the specifics of the Lanham Act. FWIW, I think the plaintiff's attorneys chose a Lanham Act case with the hope of broadening Lanham definitions through case law, but IANAL so mine is only an informally educated one.

The kind of employer who happens to be a Fortune 100 company, for starters. The one I work for monitors internet postings (like the one I'm writing) on many social networking sites, search results, and public records for employee or potential employee activity which may damage the company's public image or leak sensitive/proprietary information. If the information that the company does so weren't considered public knowledge, I would never have considered posting here. While most companies, my employer included, use (at least) a "human" filter for the gathered data, many rely on simple algorithms or third-party search agents which may provide a number of false positives.

The unfortunate fact of business life inside the corporate suite is that your life outside does directly affect your earnings and advancement. For instance, tweeting about a hobby the boss doesn't like (dog fighting, poetry slams, line dancing, whatever) can easily take a job offer off the table or cause the HR department to start the death-spiral paper trail. Facebook photos from high school or college where the subject is involved in illicit, distasteful, or bacchanalian behavior can quickly erase a large portion of lifetime earning potential should they be found and individually identifiable.

I wholeheartedly agree. Without looking at the merits of Ms. Quixote's case, I can't imagine the tortured process this court must have gone through in determining that a modern US citizen has no commercial interest in their own name. Googling new hires/clients is commonplace, as are surreptitious background checks, which means any negative information, even when demonstrably false, can hurt a person's commercial interests.

Googling a potential new hire or business associate for background information has become too widespread for anyone to have "no commercial interest" in their name. False information, even when obviously false, can and does adversely affect anyone looking for jobs or business opportunities beyond paper hats and drivethroughs. It goes to show how out of touch this court is from the mainstream of society.