Amazon Defeats Publicity Rights Lawsuit Over ‘A Gronking To Remember’ Book Cover (Forbes Cross-Post)
Greg McKenna writes as a woman using the pen name Lacey Noonan. In 2014, McKenna wrote the book “A Gronking to Remember,” an erotic “fan fiction” book about New England Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski. He self-published the book digitally…
Court Rejects “Browsewrap.” Is That Surprising?–Long v. ProFlowers
Plaintiff ordered “completed assembled” flowers from ProFlowers.com. Rather than being fully assembled flowers, he received a “do-it yourself kit in a box”. He brought a putative class action for unfair competition and CLRA violations. ProFlowers moved to arbitrate based on…
Google Defeats Lawsuit Over Duplicate Content Penalty–D’Agostino v. Appliances Buy Phone
D’Agostino provided web development services to the Appliances Buy Phone (ABP) website. He wanted to sharpen his SEO skills, so he agreed in 2009 with the ABP owners to create a mirror version of ABP, called Appliances4Sale (AFS) as a…
Buyer Wins Dispute Over Earnout For Purchased Websites
This is an earnout dispute arising out of Internet Brands’ purchase of the “doityourself.com” website. The website was launched in 1995. By 2006, it averaged 1,770,000 unique monthly visitors and earned almost $1 million in revenues. In December 2006, Internet…
Telephony Provider Didn’t Properly Form a “Telephone-Wrap” Contract–James v. Global Tel*Link
Plaintiffs filed a putative class over fees paid for calls made by inmates in New Jersey correctional institutions. At issue is whether they should be required to arbitrate their claims. Defendant, GTL, has the exclusive right to provide phone services…
Hacky Sacker’s Publicity Rights Claim Against Energy Drink Tossed–Martin v. 5-Hour Energy Drink
Johannes (Ted) Martin was (and is currently) the world record holder for “most consecutive kicks (no knees)” of a hackysack. A five hour energy drink made an advertisement depicting an unknown actor claiming he performed several superhuman tasks, including breaking…
Ninth Circuit Resolves Two of the Facebook Sponsored Stories Lawsuits
The litigation over Facebook’s sponsored stories occurred what seems like eons ago. Recently, the last of it wrapped up (although the latest ruling is the subject of a petition for rehearing en banc). It generated lots of blog fodder, and…
Google Can Derive Undisclosed Economic Benefits From CAPTCHAs–Rojas-Lozano v. Google
This lawsuit alleges that Google benefits unfairly from consumers’ responses to Google’s CAPTCHA. Plaintiff, a Massachusetts resident, responded to a two word CAPTCHA prompt when signing up for a Gmail accout. She alleged that only one of the two words…
Oculus Faces Messy Ownership Claims Over Its Head Mounted Display–Total Recall v. Luckey
Palmer Luckey, who ultimately developed the much-hyped Oculus Rift, entered into an agreement with a company called “Total Recall”. Although it was not crystal clear, the agreement was technically with Thomas Seidl, one of the partners of Total Recall. The…
More Data Breach Lawsuits Fail In Court–Michaels Stores and SuperValu
Courts recently dismissed more data breach lawsuits for failure to allege harm. Michael Stores: Michaels confirmed that consumer account information had been compromised and acknowledged that approximately 2.6 million cards could have been affected between 2013 and 2014. It offered…