Readers may recognize the name ‘Lance Dutson’ from our coverage of his battles against an ad agency over its business with the state of Maine (see here and here.)

Dutson emerged in the news again, this time as an advocate for Maine’s Republican Senator Susan Collins. Robert Cox, head of the Media Bloggers Association, wrote in The Examiner of Google rejecting Dutson’s ads about MoveOn.org:

The banned advertisements said, “Susan Collins is MoveOn’s primary target. Learn how you can help” and “Help Susan Collins stand up to the MoveOn.org money machine.” The ads linked to Collins’ campaign Web site with a headline reading “MoveOn.org has made Susan Collins their #1 target.” The Collins Web site claims that MoveOn has contributed $250,000 to her likely Democratic opponent and has run nine ads against her costing nearly $1 million. The Web site also displays MoveOn.org’s controversial “General Betray Us” ad.

An expert on intellectual property disputes cited by Cox sided with Google’s rejection of the ads, but called the rejection, "troubling." Google policy counsel Pablo Chavez said on the company’s always interesting Public Policy blog the company did not reject the ads on political grounds:

Some time ago, MoveOn.org submitted a request to Google that its trademark not be used in any ads, and as a result our advertiser support team offered instructions on how Senator Collins’ campaign could edit and resubmit its ad.

Any company or organization — regardless of political affiliation — could do what MoveOn did and thereby prevent advertisers from running ads that include their trademarks in ad texts. And that’s very important. The ad in question could have said that MoveOn.org was great, or even just so-so, and our policy would have resulted in the same outcome; Google would have asked the advertiser to drop the trademarked phrase.

Chavez also dismissed Cox’s claim of the company running other trademarks in ads without a problem. "If ads are running on Google that include trademark terms in their text, either the trademark owner has not submitted a complaint, or the advertiser has been authorized to use the trademark," he said.

Cox posted a response on Google’s Public Policy blog, exhorting the company to change its policy. "There is no basis in trademark law to support MoveOn’s claim," said Cox.

Maine’s tourism department received visitors of another sort: angry bloggers who wrote at length reviling Warren Kremer Paino for its litigation against Dutson and his attacks on what he perceived as wasteful spending by the state with the agency.

Dutson faced copyright infringement, defamation and trade libel charges from the agency. He had placed a copy of an ad created by Warren Kremer Paino for the tourism office on his blog.

That ad contained a phone number that proved to be one for a phone sex operation. Dutson obtained the image from the state’s website, where it is still publicly available for download as part of a PowerPoint presentation.

Attorneys for Warren Kremer Paino withdrew the suit “without prejudice,” the Concord Monitor reported, so if the agency choose to it could refile the suit again.

A Maine representative, Stephen Bowen, had called upon Governor John Baldacci to suspend its dealings with Warren Kremer Paino. The Lincoln County News reported how Jack Cashman, Maine’s commissioner of Economic and Community Development, urged Warren Kremer Paino to drop the suit.

Bowen likely felt the impact of all the blogger attention as well. His district contains Camden, the home to the annual Pop!Tech conference. High-profile bloggers like TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington and Microsoft’s Robert Scoble both expressed reluctance to attend the October event in response to the lawsuit.

“This is no longer a policy disagreement. It’s no longer a suit. It’s reflecting poorly on the stateand doing potential harm to my district,” Bowen said ahead of the suit’s dismissal. “The people who come to PopTech are precisely the people we want here.”

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

How far does free speech go online? Dutson’s role as defendant in a case brought by the creator of a tourism ad campaign for the state of Maine, Warren Kremer Paino, may determine that. Dutson has been a critic of the state government and of the contractors Maine brought in to do this work.

Dutson copied an ad created for a January 2006 presentation made to the state government for the tourism program. The ad was part of a PowerPoint presentation, and is still available on the state’s website (hat tip to Publishing 2.0 blogger Scott Karp for pointing to it.)

The firm claims copyright infringement has been committed. It probably did not help that the sample phone number on the ad just happens to connect to the kind of phone service a lonely person might call out of sexual desperation. Or that Dutson made note of that.

Predictably, fallout online has begun to take form. TechCrunch founder Mike Arrington drew from his legal background in criticizing the plaintiff:

Pop!Tech is a technology conference held in Camden, Maine, in October; Microsoft blogger Robert Scoble also suggested he may skip the event as well, but Dutson urged him via a comment in Scoble’s blog to attend anyway.

John Palfrey from the Berkman Center at Harvard Law posted about the issue. Palfrey’s view: “My view is that a lawsuit of this sort should have to clear a very high bar before a court awards damages to the design firm, especially where the core discussion is a matter of political speech in which a citizen is commenting on the activities of a state agency of his home state.”

Now comes the kicker. Dutson competes with the state of Maine’s Office of Tourism for keyword advertising on Google AdWords and Yahoo’s Overture:

Dutson, a member of the Media Bloggers Association, has picked up legal representation through that organization.

“This case is nothing more than an attempt by a deep-pocketed litigant to bully a blogger for criticizing state officials and state contractors”", said MBA President Robert Cox in a post. “We have successfully defended MBA members in nine previous cases and I don’t expect the outcome here to be be any different.”

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.