Trademark Law Can’t Stop Competitor’s Employee Recruitment Efforts–XPO v. R+L
Con-way and R+L compete in the freight business. XPO bought Con-way, and the acquisition sparked apparently non-speculative concerns that some Con-way employees would be laid off (which layoffs did indeed ensue, e.g., 1, 2). Before any definitive layoff plans were…
Ninth Circuit Sends Uber Driver Claims to Arbitration
This is a consolidated lawsuit brought by Uber drivers asserting FCRA and employee misclassification claims. Both named drivers were terminated after negative information surfaced in their credit report. Both drivers agreed to a 2013 version of Uber’s driver agreement, and…
Avvo’s Attorney Profile Pages Don’t Violate Publicity Rights–Vrdolyak v. Avvo
Publicity right laws often prohibit the use of third parties’ names (or other aspects of their personalities) “for commercial purposes.” So what’s a “commercial purpose”? Fuck if I know. We might make the term coextensive with the Constitutional law definition…
House Passes Consumer Review Fairness Act
Last night, the House passed the Consumer Review Fairness Act. The Senate passed the nearly identical Consumer Review Freedom Act back in December. I’ll discuss in a moment the minor variations between the two. Because of these differences, the Senate…
Ninth Circuit Criticizes Attempts to Plead Around Section 230–Kimzey v. Yelp
[Note: Venkat represented Yelp in this case but was not involved in the preparation of this post.] For all of the drama associated with Section 230 jurisprudence this year–including in the Ninth Circuit–it’s easy to forget that Section 230 still…
Redfin Defeats Copyright Claims Due to MLS License Agreement
This is a copyright lawsuit over real estate photos. This genre of litigation has surprising vitality! Stross is a photographer and broker who participates in multiple listing services (MLSs).He alleges that Redfin infringed because (1) it used “Stross’s photographs of sold…
“Kurt The CyberGuy” Loses Publicity Rights Claims Against TV Station–CyberGuy v. KTLA
Knutsson was a technology reporter and creator of the “CyberGuy” persona. He worked for TV station KTLA between 1996 and 2011. In 2005, he entered into an agreement with KTLA to be paid an annual salary of $325,000 a year…
Anti-Robocall Statute Violates First Amendment–Gresham v. Rutledge
Arkansas has a statute that prohibits: use a telephone for the purpose of offering any goods or services for sale, or for conveying information regarding any goods or services for the purpose of soliciting the sale or purchase of the…
Unfortunate Expansion of ‘Failure to Warn’ Exception to Section 230–Beckman v. Match
You recall the Ninth Circuit’s Doe v. ModelMayhem (Doe #14 v. Internet Brands) ruling from earlier this year. It held that a website couldn’t invoke Section 230 against a claim that the site should have warned its users about potential…
Court Cleans Up Trademark Status of the Phrase “Meth Lab Cleanup”
The holy grail of trademark owners is to obtain enforceable trademark rights for the standard ways people talk to each other. If achieved, the trademark owner can put up a toll gate on ordinary conversation and thwart or even shut…