August 2007 Quick Links, Part I
By Eric Goldman Search Engines * Google extended its ad serving technology to consider a user’s past search phrases in addition to their current search term. * Greg Linden: “Google is teasing too many lions.” * BusinessWeek: Some VCs are…
American Blinds-Google Lawsuit Settles
By Eric Goldman Google Inc. v. American Blinds & Wallpaper Factory Inc., 5:03-cv-05340-JF (N.D. Cal. settled August 31, 2007) After almost four years of litigation, the American Blinds lawsuit ended today with a stunning victory for Google. According to a…
Search Engine Strategies Copyright and Trademark Panel
By Eric Goldman Today I participated in the Copyright and Trademark panel at Search Engine Strategies in San Jose, along with Clarke Walton, Eve Chaurand-Fraser of Ask, Mary Berk of Microsoft and Debra Wilcox of Baker & Hostetler. As usual,…
American Airlines Sues Google Over Keyword Ads
American Airlines v. Google, 4:07-cv-00487 (N.D. Tex. complaint filed Aug. 16, 2007) [Warning: 4.4MB file] “American Airlines does not bring this lawsuit lightly.” (para. 6) Well, this is interesting. It’s not unusual for a trademark owner to sue Google for…
Lemley on Online Safe Harbors
By Eric Goldman Mark Lemley, Rationalizing Internet Safe Harbors Mark Lemley has weighed in on an topic near and dear to my heart–secondary liability online. He advances two principal arguments in his paper. First, it would make sense to harmonize…
2007 Cyberspace Law Syllabus
By Eric Goldman I’ve posted my 2007 Cyberlaw syllabus. Unlike the past few years, which were a little slow cyberlaw-wise, the past 12 months saw a lot of important developments. Let me recap some of changes I made to my…
Food Tastes Better When Branded “McDonalds”
By Eric Goldman Recently I blogged on a study showing that consumers like search results more when they are branded as coming from Google, even if the search results are substantively identical. We now have a similar study, this time…
July 2007 Quick Links, Part I
By Eric Goldman Search Engines * According to this study, up to 40% of search queries are “re-finding queries” (i.e., the searcher is trying to re-find previously viewed information). The implication: “Because people repeat queries so frequently, search engines should…
Third Circuit Bounces Lawsuit Over Google Groups–Parker v. Google
By Eric Goldman Parker v. Google, Inc., No. 06-3074 (3d Cir. July 10, 2007) Parker v. Google was one of the troika of district court opinions involving Google and copyright from Q1 2006 (along with the Perfect 10 and Field…
Credit Card Providers Aren’t Liable for Third Party Infringement–Perfect 10 v. Visa
By Eric Goldman Perfect 10, Inc. v. Visa International Service Association, No. 05-15170 (9th Cir. July 3, 2007) The Ninth Circuit has completed a hat trick of appeals involving Perfect 10’s litigation frenzy over online infringement of Perfect 10’s copyrighted…