Telephone Consumer Protection Act Case Update – Summer 2013 Edition

[Post by Venkat Balasubramani] There are a ton of TCPA cases out there. I don’t have the resources to track all of them, but here are a few that came up on my radar screen over the past few months….

App Stores Aren’t Liable For Third Party Apps–Evans v. HP (Forbes Cross-Post)

By Eric Goldman Evans v. Hewlett-Packard Co., 2013 WL 4426359 (N.D. Cal. Aug. 15, 2013) Due to the growing importance of mobile devices, app stores are among the most powerful intermediaries in the Internet ecosystem. With great power comes great…

Perfect 10 Can’t Sue Yandex for Out-of-Country Activity (Catch-up Post)

By Eric Goldman Perfect 10, Inc. v. Yandex N.V., 2013 WL 3668818 (N.D. Cal. July 12, 2013) This case has sat in my blog queue for a few weeks because I’m still not sure what to make of it. I…

Gun Classified Ads Website Isn’t Liable for Murder–Vesely v. Armslist

By Eric Goldman Vesely v. Armslist, LLC , 1:13-cv-00607 (N.D. Ill. July 29, 2013) Armslist runs an online classified ad website for guns. After finding each other on Armslist, Ladera sold a gun to Smirnov, who used the gun to…

The Latest Attempt to Use Copyright Law to Remove Negative Consumer Reviews–Small Justice v. Xcentric (Forbes Cross-Post)

By Eric Goldman [Note: as you know, I closed comments on this blog in 2006 because of a virulent comment spam attack. Sometimes I miss having comments, but then again, seeing the comments I got at Forbes in response to…

YouTube Gets Easy Section 230 Win–Gavra v Google

By Eric Goldman Gavra v. Google Inc., 2013 WL 3788241 (N.D. Cal. July 17, 2013). The complaint. I [heart] easy 47 USC 230 cases. Here, a Romanian lawyer felt 13 YouTube clips, posted by an ex-client, defamed her. After sending…

Recap of Stanford E-Commerce Conference Panel on Takedown Notices

By Eric Goldman Last month, I attended Stanford Law School’s annual E-commerce Law Conference, one of my favorite conferences of the year because of its subject material and the chance to hang out with so many friends. This year, the…

Tenth Circuit Kills the Initial Interest Confusion Doctrine–1-800 Contacts v. Lens.com

By Eric Goldman 1-800 Contacts, Inc. v. Lens.com, Inc., 2013 WL 3665627 (10th Cir. July 16, 2013) Here are some things I hate: * duplicitous litigants, such as plaintiffs who buy competitive keyword advertising yet sue competitors for doing the…

Dentist’s Defamation Lawsuit Against Yelp Preempted by Section 230–Braverman v. Yelp

By Eric Goldman Braverman v. Yelp, Inc., 2013 NY Slip Op 31407 (NY Sup. Ct June 28, 2013) Mal Braverman is a Manhattan dentist. He sued Yelp for defamation based on two allegedly defamatory user posts. I’m not sure which…

Catching Up on 512 Safe Harbor Cases (and Other Online Copyright Cases) From the Past Year

[Post by Venkat Balasubramani with a comment by Eric; followed by a massive supplement from Eric] [Eric’s intro: sometimes, a draft blog post misses the publication window and then comes out painfully late. Venkat drafted the first draft of this…