With Rosetta Stone Settlement, Google Gets Closer to Legitimizing Billions of AdWords Revenue (Forbes Cross-Post)
By Eric Goldman After 3+ years of litigation, Google ($GOOG) and Rosetta Stone ($RST) settled Rosetta Stone’s trademark lawsuit over Google AdWords. The settlement terms are confidential, but a joint statement published in Reuters says that the parties will “meaningfully collaborate…
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 ($GOOG) makes billions of dollars a year selling AdWords ads triggered by third party trademarks. Over the past decade, trademark owners have brought about 20…
Q3 2012 Quick Links, Part 1 (Trademarks/Domain Names, Patents, Trade Secrets)
By Eric Goldman and Jake McGowan Trademarks/Domain Names * AdAge: “Consumers Don’t Really Know Who Sponsors the Olympics.” This reminds us that trying to protect against “sponsorship confusion” is futile. For example: 16% believed Google sponsors the Olympics; and of…
Battle Over LinkedIn Account Between Employer and Employee Largely Gutted–Eagle v. Morgan
[Post by Venkat Balasubramani, with comments from Eric] Eagle v. Morgan, 2012 WL 4739436 (E.D. Pa.; Oct. 4, 2012) We’ve repeatedly posted about employer-employee (or ex-employee) disputes involving social media accounts (PhoneDog; Maremont; Kremer; Insynq). Eagle v. Morgan is in…
Latest “Hot Topics in Internet Law” Talk Slides
By Eric Goldman Earlier this month, I spoke at the “IP and the Internet” conference sponsored by the California State Bar’s IP Section on the perennial favorite topic, “Hot Topics in Internet Law.” My talk slides. Given the conference’s theme,…
Cafepress Suffers Potentially Significant Trademark Loss for Users’ Uploaded Designs (Forbes Cross-Post)
Cafepress.com ($PRSS) provides a popular user-to-user marketplace websites that allows users to upload logos or slogans and sell items bearing those logos or slogans, which Cafepress.com manufactures on demand (a so-called “print-on-demand” service). Like any other user-generated content website, there’s always…
Newly Released Consumer Survey Indicates that Legal Concerns About Competitive Keyword Advertising Are Overblown (Forbes Cross-Post)
By Eric Goldman Competitive keyword advertising—buying ads triggered by a keyword search for a competitor’s trademarks at venues like Google AdWords, Yahoo and Microsoft’s Bing—has generated enormous legal angst over the past decade, including hundreds of law review articles, occasional…
Amazon.com’s Anti-Counterfeiting Efforts Blessed by California Appellate Court (Forbes Cross-Post)
By Eric Goldman A California appellate court has blessed Amazon.com’s ($AMZN) efforts to police counterfeit goods sold by its third party merchants. This is especially good news for Amazon because the leading precedent on the topic had blessed eBay’s ($EBAY)…
Six-Month Retrospective of SOPA’s Demise [Forbes Cross-Post, A Month Late!] + SOPA/PROTECT-IP/OPEN Linkwrap #3
By Eric Goldman [This post is composed of three parts. The first part, all 2,700 words of it, is a cross-post from Forbes last month assessing where we stood 6 months after January 18, 2012. Sorry it’s taken me so…