KinderStart v. Google Motions to Dismiss and Strike
By Eric Goldman KinderStart.com LLC v. Google, Inc., No. C 06-2057 RS (N.D. Cal. motions to dismiss and strike filed May 2, 2006) You may recall the pending lawsuit by KinderStart against Google for Google’s downgrade of KinderStart’s PageRank. My…
Quick Links May 2006
By Eric Goldman My blogging queue has gotten too thick. Here’s some items that caught my attention that I’ve been meaning to blog and simply haven’t gotten to. * I previously blogged about Chris Wilson, the website operator who allowed…
Yahoo “Syndication Fraud” Lawsuits–Crafts by Veronica v. Yahoo and Draucker Development v. Yahoo
By Eric Goldman Crafts by Veronica v. Yahoo, Inc., No. 2:06-cv-01985-JCL-MF (D. N.J. complaint filed May 1, 2006) Draucker Development v. Yahoo, Inc., No. CV06-2737 (C.D. Cal. complaint filed May 4, 2006) Two companion lawsuits against Yahoo for what the…
Google Sued for Child Porn–Toback v. Google
By Eric Goldman Toback v. Google, Inc., No. 06-007246 (NY Sup. Ct. complaint filed May 4, 2006) Yet another legislator has seized the public microphone to grandstand about Internet threats. This time the lucky legislator is Jeffrey Toback, a member…
AIT Click Fraud Lawsuit Stayed
By Eric Goldman Advanced Internet Technologies v. Google, 2006 WL 889477 (N.D. Cal. Apr. 5, 2006) AIT is the lead plaintiff who replaced Click Defense in a click fraud class action lawsuit. Last month, Google announced a tentative settlement of…
Keyword Purchases Not a Trademark Use–Merck v. Mediplan Health Consulting
By Eric Goldman Merck & Co. v. Mediplan Health Consulting, 2006 WL 800756 (SDNY Mar. 30, 2006) About a week after Edina Realty v. TheMLSonline allowed a keyword purchase of a competitor’s trademark to go to trial, we got another…
Search Engine Bias Article
By Eric Goldman Search engines ranking algorithms create winners and losers, and some people don’t like this system. Obviously the losers don’t like it (see the KinderStart v. Google lawsuit as an example). More importantly, commentators with normative views about…
Competitor’s Keyword Ad Purchase May Be Trademark Infringement–Edina Realty v. TheMLSonline
By Eric Goldman Edina Realty, Inc. v. TheMLSonline.com, 2006 WL 737064 (D. Minn. Mar. 20, 2006) There have been many lawsuits involving keyword advertising, but in most of the reported decisions, the search engines were the defendants. There have been…
Google Sued Over Rankings–KinderStart.com v. Google
By Eric Goldman KinderStart.com LLC v. Google, Inc., No. C 06-2057 RS (N.D. Cal. complaint filed March 17, 2006) Google has been sued for downgrading the PageRank of websites in contravention of its stated “objective” policies. In KinderStart’s case, they…
Lane’s Gifts Click Fraud Lawsuit Near Settlement
By Eric Goldman Google announced that it is near a settlement in the Lane’s Gifts class action lawsuit over click fraud. The way I read the announcement, the parties have agreed to the terms, so the settlement just needs the…