The YouTube “remove-and-relocate” cases involve similar facts. A YouTuber uploaded a video and promoted it. YouTube suspected irregularities with the promotion, removed the video from its initial URL (breaking inbound links, stripping the comments, and resetting the like and view…
Santilli claims to have developed a telescope that can detect antimatter. Van Erp is dubious about that claim. Van Erp ran a blog that included posts like “The Continuing Stupidity of Ruggero Santilli” and “More Santilli Shenanigans.” The court says:…
Motherless runs a UGC site for adult content. None of its content is licensed from content producers. It is primarily ad-supported (85%), with the remaining revenues coming from subscriptions (but only 0.2% of active users are subscribers) and sales of schwag. For a…
I’m blogging this case now, even though it came out a few months ago, because we see so few 512(f) cases that make any progress at all. At its core, the litigants dispute ownership over a TV show, “The Weekend…
Yesterday, the Ninth Circuit ruled about trademarked stripes on tennis shoes. To me, legally weaponizing dots in three lines on a shoe predictably leads to wasteful and possibly anti-consumer litigation. However, instead of critiquing the opinion generally, I’ll isolate just…
Gersh, the plaintiff, is a realtor living in Whitefish, Montana. She heard about a planned protest of businesses housed in a building owned by Sherry Spencer, the mother of Richard Spencer. (Richard, among other things, went viral for getting punched…
The court summarizes this case: Plaintiff alleges that Grindr and the individual defendants engaged in a conspiracy to produce and disseminate sexually explicit photographs and pornography, with Grindr providing the platform for anonymous meetings, communication, and dissemination. Section 230 may…
This is a lawsuit between two Alzheimer’s-related non-profit organizations, the Alzheimer’s Association (the more established and better-funded group) and the Alzheimer’s Foundation (the relative upstart). I blogged a prior 2015 ruling. The potential for brand collisions in consumers’ minds seems…
[Though most of these rulings are defense-favorable, Congress recently eviscerated Section 230 and isn’t done ruining its greatest online policy masterpiece] Twitter Defeats Defamation Claim As part of a custody dispute, a former spouse allegedly disparaged the other spouse in…
This case involves dispensers of plastic bags for picking up dogshit. The plaintiff has a registered trademark in the brand “ONEpul.” The defendant describes its bags as “one-pull” (and yet, the term “descriptive fair use” doesn’t appear in the opinion…