[Post by Venkat Balasubramani, with comments from Eric] Facebook, Inc. v. Power Ventures, Inc., et al., C 08-05780 JW (N.D. Cal.; Feb. 16, 2012) The long-running dispute between Facebook and Power Ventures came to a close last week, with Judge…
[Post by Venkat Balasubramani] Whitaker v. Health Net of California, Inc., Civ S-11-0910 KHM-DAD (E.D. Cal.; Jan. 19, 2012) This is another data breach class action. Plaintiffs tried to squeeze their claims through a narrow opening left by Ninth Circuit…
[Post by Venkat Balasubramani with comments from Eric] Olson v. LaBrie, 2012 WL 426585 (Minn. App. Ct. Feb. 13, 2012) This case is what happens when a headline from The Onion comes to life. Aaron Olson sought a harassment restraining…
By Eric Goldman As you may know, the IP professor community is blessed to have a number of “work-in-progress” events where we share our research-in-process with, and get early feedback from, our peers. Last weekend, I attended one of those…
By Eric Goldman Espinoza v. County of Orange, 2012 WL 420149 (Cal. App. Ct. February 9, 2012) Espinoza was born with an incomplete hand. In 1996, he started working for the county probations department. In 2006, a co-worker started two…
By Eric Goldman Fair Housing Council of San Fernando Valley v. Roommate.com, LLC, 2012 WL 310849 (9th Cir. February 2, 2012) A brief history of this long-running case. Fair housing advocates sued Roommates.com for allowing potential roommates to evaluate each…
By Eric Goldman Kinbook LLC v. Microsoft Corp., 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 8570 (E.D. Pa. Jan. 25, 2012) Microsoft makes the Kinect motion controller for Xbox, and for a while tried out a mobile phone named Kin. Kinbook makes a…
By Venkat Balasubramani, with comments from Eric. Twitter recently announced its decision to censor tweets on a country-by-country basis. People were up in arms and planned a #twitterblackout. It was a big story last week. (Needless to say, I didn’t…
[Post by Venkat Balasubramani] Kwan v. Clearwire Corp., C09-1392JLR (W.D.Wash.; Jan. 3, 2012) Professor Goldman blogged recently about a case involving Facebook where the court enforced Facebook’s terms of use and based on a venue clause in Facebook’s terms transferred…
[Post by Venkat Balasubramani] PhoneDog v. Kravitz, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 10561 (N.D. Cal.; Jan. 30, 2012) PhoneDog and Kravitz are fighting over ownership of the Twitter account Kravitz used while he was working for PhoneDog. In an earlier order,…