Redfin Defeats Copyright Claims Due to MLS License Agreement
This is a copyright lawsuit over real estate photos. This genre of litigation has surprising vitality! Stross is a photographer and broker who participates in multiple listing services (MLSs).He alleges that Redfin infringed because (1) it used “Stross’s photographs of sold…
Anarchy Has Ensued In Courts’ Handling of Online Contract Formation (Round Up Post)
[Eric’s introduction: ever since the Ninth Circuit mishandled the already-muddled definitions of “clickwrap” and “browsewrap” in the Nguyen case, we’ve seen a steady decline in the coherence of the law of online contract formation. Judges can’t figure out whether or…
FTC Sues 1-800 Contacts For Restricting Competitive Keyword Advertising
For over a decade, I’ve blogged about 1-800 Contacts’ campaign to suppress competitive keyword advertising, including its legislative games (e.g., those times when 1-800 Contacts asked the Utah legislature to ban competitive keyword advertising) and at least 15 lawsuits against…
Judge Declines to Enforce Uber’s Terms of Service–Meyer v. Kalanick
This is an antitrust case against Travis Kalanick, the founder of Uber, alleging that Mr. Kalanick “orchestrated and participated in an antitrust conspiracy.” Uber moved successfully to intervene, and then moved to force arbitration (Mr. Kalanick joined in this motion)….
Want An Enforceable Online Contract? Don’t Use A Footer Link Called “Reference”–Zajac v. Walker
This lawsuit involves the purchase of items I don’t understand. Let’s just call them “thingies.” The buyer Zajac needed thingies with an appropriate rating. It bought the thingies from a distributor, Walker, then realized the thingies didn’t have the appropriate…
Priceline Avoids Liability For Resort Fees Due To Its Onsite Disclosures–Singer v. Priceline
This is a lawsuit alleging that Priceline improperly failed to disclose “resort fees” in connection with its Name Your Own Price service. The service allowed consumers to name a price (bid a dollar amount) for a hotel in a given…
Q2 2016 Quick Links, Part 5 (Miscellaneous)
E-Commerce/Sharing Economy * Reuters: EU cautions governments against banning Uber, Airbnb * Needle Inc. v. Department of Workforce Services, 2016 WL 1729547 (Utah Ct. App. April 28, 2016). Finding that product advocates, who did online customer chatting on an ad…
Courts Approve Terms of Service-Based Arbitration Clauses for Uber and Groupon
[Note: this is part 2 of TOS Arbitration Day. You can access Eric’s post from this morning here.] Online terms, and in particular arbitration clauses, have been subject to attack by plaintiffs’ lawyers. News reports have also raised the specter…
“Modified Clickwrap” Upheld In Court–Moule v. UPS
[Eric’s introduction: today Venkat and I are “celebrating” (?) TOS Arbitration Day here at the Technology & Marketing Law Blog. Independently, we each drafted blog posts about arbitration clauses in terms of service–covering different cases! We could have combined the…
Supreme Court Revisits Copyright’s Attorney Fee Shifts–Kirtsaeng v. Wiley
The Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. 505, has a discretionary “loser-pays” attorneys’ fee shift. We’ve blogged repeatedly about abusive copyright enforcements where that fee shift provides a modicum of fairness to defendants (e.g., Inglewood v. Teixeira; Katz v. Chevaldina; Righthaven v….