Alleged “Conspiracy” Among Disgruntled Ex-Employees Defeats Section 230–Tanisha v. Chandra
[Note: as I’ve mentioned before, sometimes Westlaw randomly spits out cases months after they were issued. This opinion is 4 months old but just appeared in my Westlaw alerts this week. Despite its age, I’m blogging it because of its…
Does Two-Factor Authentication Violate the TCPA?–Duguid v. Facebook
Plaintiff sued Facebook alleging TCPA claims on behalf of a putative class. Facebook sends text messages when someone logs in to their account via a new or unrecognized device. Plaintiff was a non-Facebook user who received these messages. Unfortunately, despite…
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…
Big Win For Free Speech Online In Backpage Lawsuit (Forbes Cross-Post)
Regulators and plaintiffs have been trying to eradicate online prostitution ads for a decade. These efforts have been partially hampered by 47 U.S.C. 230 (Section 230), a law Congress enacted in 1996 to protect websites from liability for third party…
Facebook Isn’t Liable For Fake User Account Containing Non-Consensual Pornography–Caraccioli v. Facebook (Forbes Cross-Post)
Franco Caraccioli is a third-year law student in San Diego. For reasons not explained in the opinion, someone created a fake Facebook account named “Franco Caracciolijerkingman” and posted photos and videos of Caraccioli “sexually arousing or pleasuring himself.” (All facts…
PGA Can Turn Caddies Into ‘Human Billboards’–Hicks v. PGA Tour
As I’ve written before, marketers are in a never-ending quest to find and exploit new ways to capture consumer attention. With the rise of DVR ad-avoidance technologies, marketers keep finding more unskippable broadcast TV ad exposures like product placements. And…
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…
Why The Subway ‘Footlong’ Lawsuits Fell Short (Forbes Cross-Post)
You may recall the lawsuit against Subway Restaurants for selling “12 inch” and “footlong” sandwiches that were allegedly less than 12 inches long. The case attracted lots of media attention and consumer sniggers because of Subway’s ubiquity (and the endless…