August 2007 Quick Links, Part I
By Eric Goldman
Search Engines
* Google extended its ad serving technology to consider a user’s past search phrases in addition to their current search term.
* Greg Linden: “Google is teasing too many lions.”
* BusinessWeek: Some VCs are cranky that Google is competing with them by actively investing in start-up deals.
* From Answers.com’s press release in August: “Answers Corporation (NASDAQ: ANSW) announced today that, due to a search engine algorithmic adjustment by Google, Answers.com has seen a drop in search engine traffic starting last week. As a result, overall traffic is currently down approximately 28% from levels immediately prior to the change…This change only demonstrates the sound business rationale behind our agreement to purchase Dictionary.com, because it underscores a primary motivation for the deal: to secure a steady source of direct traffic and mitigate our current dependence on search engine algorithms.”
Intellectual Property
* Question: Any theories why the Copyright Office hasn’t yet issued “final” regulations for the DMCA 512 registration of an agent for notice…9 years after the DMCA passed?
* From the EFF: RIAA v. the People: Four Years Later. A terrific overview/recap of the RIAA’s campaign against online dissemination of music. I’m planning to assign this report to my Cyberlaw students when we discuss file-sharing.
* New York Mercantile Exchange v. Intercontinental Exchange, No. 05-5585-cv (2d Cir. Aug. 1, 2007). Second Circuit says that mercantile exchange settlement prices are not protectable due to the copyright merger doctrine. It would have been better if the court had said that prices aren’t copyrightable, but perhaps we should take our victories where we can find them. HT Patry.
* Bensbargains.net, LLC v. XPBargains.com, 2007 WL 2385092 (S.D. Cal. August 16, 2007). Plaintiff aggregated various “deals” into a website and claimed a copyright in the aggregation. Defendant took the deals and integrated them into its website. Copyright infringement? The judge sets an arbitrary cutoff: “there is insufficient similarity to survive summary judgment where either the percentage of Plaintiff’s deals that were copied or the percentage of Defendants’ deals that were derived from Plaintiff’s website is less than 70%.” Evan has more.
* Lennar Pacific Properties Management, Inc. v. Dauben, Inc., 2007 WL 2340487 (N.D. Tex. August 16, 2007). Trademark owner gets an ex parte TRO against a domainer. More from Evan.
* WSJ: The KSR case has noticeably improved prospects for patent defendants.
* The EFF is challenging UMG’s practice of stamping a “promotional use only, not for resale” label on promotional CDs.
Marketing/Advertising
* NYT on car ad-wrapping. See my previous post where I proclaimed ad wrapping as a relic of the dot com boom. It looks like the practice still lives! Open invitation: anyone who would like to pay me $800/mo to wrap my car, please call me! For that amount of cash, I’ll drive the ugliest ad imaginable.
* There was a new ruling in NetQuote v. Byrd, which I styled as the “lead fraud” case. Rebecca recaps the action.
* Apparently, in Florida, a lot of senior citizens dining out at restaurants will ask for some lemon wedges and a glass of water, then add a few Sweet-and-Low packets to create their own tableside-brewed lemonade for free instead of ordering a drink off the menu. One restaurant owner got fed up and charged a diner $1.29 for the unadvertised menu item of self-brewed lemonade. Now, the sparks are flying!
* More unfortunately placed ads.
Contracts
* Cohn v. TrueBeginnings LLC, No.B190423 (Cal. Ct. App. July 31, 2007). Another court upholds a mandatory clickthrough even when the actual terms are hyperlinked. Tom O’Toole comments and provides screenshots.
* Ken Adams demonstrates, step-by-step, how he edits a contract.
Lexicon Watch
* New word alert: “bacn” = transactional email from websites you have a relationship with. Personally, I think we need to get off the meat metaphors.
* William Gibson says the prefix “cyber” is passe.