Keyword Advertising as Corporate Identity Theft—Sen. Eastman Defends New Utah Law Banning Keyword Advertising
By Eric Goldman Last month, Utah quietly passed SB 236 to outlaw keyword advertising. Last week, SB 236’s sponsor, Sen. Dan Eastman, blogged a defense of the law. I really respect Sen. Eastman for engaging his critics in the blogosphere,…
March 2007 Quick Links, Google Edition
By Eric Goldman My monthly recap of interesting news items grew too big this month, so I’m breaking it into two postings. With so much attention directed towards Google, this first edition of March’s quick links will focus just on…
AFP v. Google Settles
By Eric Goldman The Agence France-Presse v. Google lawsuit has settled. See news reports: AP, CNET News.com. Like it did with the Associated Press, Google struck a licensing deal for AFP content, including indexing it in Google News. Financial terms…
Google AdWords Contract Upheld (Again)–Feldman v. Google
By Eric Goldman Feldman v. Google, Inc., 2007 WL 966011 (E.D. Pa. March 29, 2007) Yet another click fraud lawsuit, this time involving one of the 556 plaintiffs that opted out of the Google click fraud settlement. In my prior…
Utah Bans Keyword Advertising [Updated]
By Eric Goldman Utah SB 236 (the “Trademark Protection Act”), enacted March 19, 2007 Legislators enact stupid laws all of the time, but some laws transcend mere stupidity and produce a single 3 letter response: WTF? And no legislature has…
Miva Securities Litigation Rejects Most Click Fraud/Syndication Fraud Claims
By Eric Goldman In re Miva, Inc. Securities Litigation, 2007 WL 809686 (M.D. Fla. Mar. 15, 2007) Stockholders of Miva (formerly FindWhat) sued Miva, alleging that Miva had inflated its stock price by making false public statements. In this ruling,…
KinderStart v. Google Dismissed–With Sanctions Against KinderStart’s Counsel
By Eric Goldman KinderStart.com LLC v. Google, Inc., C 06-2057 JF (N.D. Cal. March 16, 2007) Copy of the opinion dismissing the lawsuit Copy of the opinion granting sanctions against KinderStart’s counsel Gregory Yu Google has won big in the…
Person v. Google Dismissed (with leave to amend)
By Eric Goldman Person v. Google, C 06-7297 JF (RS) (N.D. Cal. Mar. 16, 2007) As expected, Judge Fogel dismissed Person’s antitrust lawsuit against Google but gave Person one more chance to refile a complaint. It would be foolish for…
Click Fraud Lawsuit Survives Motion to Dismiss–Payday Advance v. FindWhat
By Eric Goldman Payday Advance Plus, Inc. v. Findwhat.com, Inc., 2007 WL 760437 (S.D.N.Y. Mar. 12, 2007) The high-profile click fraud lawsuits against Google and Yahoo settled last summer, but other lesser-known lawsuits appear to be in the pipeline, such…
Can A Spider Enter Into A Binding Contract?–Internet Archive v. Shell
By John Ottaviani Can a spider enter into a binding contract when the terms and conditions on the website declare that copying or distributing anything on the site indicates an agreement to or acceptance of terms, and the spider copies…