New Metatag/SEO Lawsuit–Salu, Inc. v. Pitts
By Eric Goldman Salu, Inc. v. Pitts (E.D. Ca. complaint filed Nov. 17, 2005). Introduction Salu operates skinstore.com, a website that sells skin care products. (With that name, I was totally expecting to find a porn site, but the website…
Microsoft Will Be an Adware Vendor
By Eric Goldman Microsoft is considering migrating some of its software titles to an ad-supported model instead of a consumer licensing fee model. This isn’t exactly a new idea–this development has been anticipated for at least a decade. However, if…
Supreme Court Denies 1-800 Contacts Cert Petition
By Eric Goldman Today the US Supreme Court denied 1-800 Contacts’ petition for certiorari of the second circuit opinion in 1-800 Contacts v. WhenU. I’m not surprised by the denial, but the bigger question is–now what for 1-800 Contacts’ campaign…
Wheel PTO Examiner Profiled
By Eric Goldman Washington Post runs an amusing but surprisingly insightful story about the PTO’s chief examiner of wheel and axle patents, Russell Stormer. One would think that after 5,500 years, there would be few new inventions in the world…
DMCA Online Safe Harbor Empirical Study by Urban and Quilter
By Eric Goldman Jennifer Urban of USC and Laura Quilter have released a working report entitled “Efficient Process or “Chilling Effects”? Takedown Notices Under Section 512 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.” To my knowledge, this is the first empirical…
Texas AG Sues Sony Under State Anti-Spyware Law
By Eric Goldman Texas v. Sony BMG Music Entertainment (Tx. Dist. Ct. complaint filed Nov. 21, 2005). From a legal standpoint, today wasn’t a good day for Sony. In addition to being sued by the EFF, Texas decided to join…
Reality TV Show Contracts
By Eric Goldman I’ve blogged about the Apprentice TV show before. See, e.g., this post about product placement on the Apprentice. At ContractsProf blog, where I’m doing some occasional blogging, I critique the Apprentice’s participant contract clause imposing a $5M…
Spyware Litigation Recap
By Eric Goldman There’s been an explosion of litigation involving spyware/adware–so much that I’ve not been able to blog it all on a timely basis. This post “catches up” some of the lawsuits from the last couple of months. In…
Yahoo Wins Online Harassment Case Under 47 USC 230
By Eric Goldman Barnes v. Yahoo, 2005 WL 3005602 (D. Or. Nov. 8, 2005) Barnes claimed that her ex-boyfriend harassed her by creating Yahoo user profiles containing nude photos of her plus her contact info. Barnes also claimed that her…
Yale “Regulating Search?” Symposium
By Eric Goldman On December 3, Yale is sponsoring a symposium on regulating search engines. Although search engine issues have come up at plenty of other symposia, I think this is the first major law school symposium dedicated to the…