Virtual Casino Doesn’t Violate California’s Gambling Law–Mason v. Machine Zone (Guest Blog Post)
By Guest Blogger Angie Jin [Eric’s note: Angie Jin is a Cornell Law 3L who volunteered to write up this post on a case that was festering in my queue for a few months.] Plaintiff, Mia Mason, filed a Class…
Shutterfly Can’t Shake Face-Scanning Privacy Lawsuit
A putative class action accuses Shutterfly of violating the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act. The plaintiff, who is not a Shutterfly user, alleges that, when an identified Shuttterfly user uploaded pictures of plaintiff, Shutterfly created a “face scan” using the…
2H 2015 Quick Links, Part 5 (Section 230, Pornography)
Section 230 * Backpage.com, LLC v. Dart, 2015 WL 7717221 (7th Cir. Nov. 30, 2015) In his public capacity as a sheriff of a major county (Cook County has a population of more than 5.2 million), Sheriff Dart is not…
2H 2015 Quick Links, Part 4 (Content Regulation & More)
* Miquel Peguera: “The man who won the right-to-be-forgotten case in the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has now been denied the right to suppress links to comments about that case by the Spanish Data Protection Authority…
2H 2015 Quick Links, Part 3 (Trespass To Chattels, Privacy/Security)
Trespass to Chattels * Crapps v. State, 2015 WL 8114247 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. Dec. 8, 2015). This is a revenge porn case, and the defendant was convicted of violating an anti-stalking protection order. However, in this ruling, the court…
Online Dating Services Must Give California Users a “Cooling Off” Period–Howell v. Grindr
California has a statute applicable to dating contracts that gives consumers the right to cancel within 3 days of signing up. Companies must advise clients of this and provide a cancellation mechanism and a full refund. Grindr, an online dating…
2H 2015 Quick Links, Part 2 (Patents, Trademarks, Other IP)
Patents * ClearCorrect Operating, LLC v. International Trade Com’n, 2015 WL 6875205 (Fed. Cir. Nov. 10, 2015): ITC has jurisdiction only over “material things,” not digital content. An obvious but much needed ruling. * Washington Post: Patents are a terrible…
2H 2015 Quick Links, Part 1 (Copyright)
* Norberto-Colon Lorenzana v. South American Restaurants Corp., No. 14-1698 (1st Cir. Aug. 21, 2015): “a chicken sandwich is not eligible for copyright protection. This makes good sense; neither the recipe nor the name Pechu Sandwich fits any of the…
YouTube Wins Another Case Over Removing And Relocating User Videos (Forbes Cross-Post)
I recently blogged about a lawsuit against YouTube for taking down a user’s video and relocating it to a different URL. Users get upset when their videos are removed-and-relocated because the process strips the video of its view count and…
Employee Kvetching About Job On Facebook Still Entitled To Unemployment Benefits
Martinez worked at Yours Truly Consignment Shoppe. One of her co-workers was fired (along with another person) and posted the news on Facebook, adding how she hated working at Yours Truly for some time now. Martinez “liked” this post and…