Trademark Lawsuit Against Groupon Isn’t Going Well–Groupion v. Groupon
By Eric Goldman Groupion LLC v. Groupon, Inc., 2011 WL 5913992 (N.D. Cal. Nov. 28, 2011) Groupion provides CRM software as a service (SaaS). Groupon distributes “deal of the day” offers that are typically unprofitable for advertisers and often have…
Ad Network Avoids Contributory Copyright Infringement for Serving Ads to a Rogue Website–Elsevier v. Chitika
By Eric Goldman with comments from Venkat Elsevier, Ltd. v. Chitika, Inc., 2011 WL 6008975 (D. Mass. Dec. 2, 2011). Chitika’s brief supporting its motion for judgment on the pleadings. Elsevier’s opposition. Chitika’s proposed reply brief. As Venkat recently indicated,…
Medical Justice Capitulates by “Retiring” Its Anti-Patient Review Contracts
By Eric Goldman It’s been a rough week for Medical Justice, the company that tries to help doctors suppress patient reviews. First, the Center for Democracy and Technology filed an FTC complaint alleging three main points: (1) Medical Justice deceives…
Fraud Allegations Don’t Trump 47 USC 230–Hopkins v. Doe
By Eric Goldman Hopkins v. Doe #1, 2011 WL 5921446 (N.D. Ga. Nov. 28, 2011). The initial complaint. Hopkins’ lawsuit-related website. This lawsuit relates to allegedly defamatory statements that Does made about Hopkins on Topix. As a pro se, Hopkins…
Dangerous Copyright Office Proposal to Undercut the DMCA Online Safe Harbors
By Eric Goldman In light of SOPA and its capacity to destroy the current online safe harbor scheme, it seems almost quaint to keep worrying about 17 USC 512. However, unless SOPA/PROTECT-IP passes, 512 remains an essential part of the…
eBay Gets 47 USC 230 Dismissal of Products Liability Claim–Inman v. Technicolor
By Eric Goldman Inman v. Technicolor USA, Inc., 2011 WL 5829024 (W.D. Pa. Nov. 18, 2011) Today, I’m thankful for 47 USC 230. Whenever I think about it, I am still incredulous the law is on the books. Nowadays, Congress’…
Why I Oppose the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)/E-PARASITES Act
By Eric Goldman [Note: I’ve been working on this post for about 2 weeks, so my apologies if my comments are duplicative of the intervening discussion about the bill] The DMCA online safe harbors have worked pretty well over the…
Employers Demanding the Right to Remotely Wipe Employees’ Phones?
By Eric Goldman I got the following email from one of my students (I edited a little to increase the anonymity): Recently, my spouse’s company announced that it is going to implement a new policy regarding those employees using their…
Australian Court Says Google Isn’t Liable for Advertiser’s Misleading Ad–ACCC v. Trading Post (Guest Blog Post)
By Guest Blogger Mark Bender, with some comments by Eric Australian Competition and Consumer Commission v Trading Post Australia Pty Ltd [2011] FCA 1086 (September 22, 2011, corrected October 10, 2011) [Eric’s introduction: Mark Bender is a business law lecturer…
Good News/Bad News About the Number of Blogs Eligible for the 17 USC 512 Safe Harbor
By Eric Goldman My 2006 article about blog law included the following passage (footnotes omitted): few blogs satisfy the numerous technical prerequisites for § 512 eligibility, such as registering their websites with the U.S. Copyright Office. To assess this, on…