Blogger Can’t Defeat Copyright Infringement Claim on Motion to Dismiss–Katz v. Chevaldina
By Eric Goldman Katz v. Chevaldina, 2012 WL 5245401 (S.D. Fla. October 5, 2012). The original complaint. This is a high-profile case (and part of an ongoing litigation battle between the parties). Raanan Katz is a Florida real estate developer…
Google Gets Unwanted Ruling in AdWords Trademark Lawsuit–CYBERsitter v. Google
By Eric Goldman CYBERsitter LLC v. Google, Inc., 2012 WL 5873650 (C.D. Cal. Oct. 24, 2012) This is one of three remaining trademark lawsuits against Google for AdWords. The other two pending suits are Rosetta Stone and Home Decor Center;…
Google Defeats Trademark Challenge to Its AdWords Service–Jurin v. Google (Forbes Cross-Post)
By Eric Goldman Jurin v. Google, Inc., 2012 WL 5011007 (E.D. Cal. October 17, 2012). Google ($GOOG) makes billions of dollars a year selling AdWords ads triggered by third party trademarks. Over the past decade, trademark owners have brought about 20…
Twitter’s Country-Specific Content Blocking Raises Questions about the Efficacy of Geolocation (Guest Blog Post)
By Guest Blogger Marketa Trimble Twitter’s General Counsel announced last week that the company, for the first time, “withheld” content from users from a certain jurisdiction. As Twitter explains on its website, its “goal is to respect [its] users’ expression,…
Does the Supreme Court Have a Free Policy Choice in Wiley v. Kirtsaeng? (Guest Blog Post)
By Guest Blogger Marketa Trimble Does the Supreme Court Have a Free Policy Choice in Wiley v. Kirtsaeng? (A Template for an Interpretation of the Copyright Act that Ignores the Place of Manufacture and Provides a Free Choice between the…
How Long Does a Post-Mortem Right of Publicity Last?–Hebrew University v. GM (Guest Blog Post)
by Guest Blogger Tyler Ochoa The right of publicity is a state-law right to use one’s identity for a commercial purpose. Thus, if you want to use a celebrity’s name or image in an advertisement, you have to get his…
A Dark Side of Data Portability: Litigators Love It (Forbes Cross-Post)
By Eric Goldman In re White Tail Oilfield Services, L.L.C., 2012 WL 4857777 (E.D. La. Oct. 11, 2012) Cloud services are great, but they pose a number of challenges for users. For example, users may legitimately fear that vendors will…
$1 Billion Pro Se Privacy Lawsuit Against Google Fails–Shah v. MyLife
By Eric Goldman Shah v. MyLife.Com, Inc., 2012 WL 4863696 (D. Or. September 21, 2012) (magistrate’s report and recommendations). On October 11, 2012, the judge approved the magistrate’s report only on subject matter and personal jurisdiction grounds. The initial complaint….
Wikipedia’s “Pay-for-Play” Scandal Highlights Wikipedia’s Vulnerabilities (Forbes Cross-Post)
By Eric Goldman Recently, two high-level Wikipedia UK insiders, Roger Bamkin and Maximillian Klein, were caught with apparent conflicts-of-interest. Bamkin, a Wikipedia UK trustee and “Wikipedian in Residence,” allegedly maintained a paid consultancy for the country of Gibraltar while editing and seeking additional exposure…
The Proposed “Cloud Computing Act of 2012,” and How Internet Regulation Can Go Awry (Forbes Cross-Post)
By Eric Goldman Sen. Amy Klobuchar has introduced a new bill, the “Cloud Computing Act of 2012” (S.3569), that purports to “improve the enforcement of criminal and civil law with respect to cloud computing.” Given its introduction so close to…