California has a statute applicable to dating contracts that gives consumers the right to cancel within 3 days of signing up. Companies must advise clients of this and provide a cancellation mechanism and a full refund. Grindr, an online dating…
Patents * ClearCorrect Operating, LLC v. International Trade Com’n, 2015 WL 6875205 (Fed. Cir. Nov. 10, 2015): ITC has jurisdiction only over “material things,” not digital content. An obvious but much needed ruling. * Washington Post: Patents are a terrible…
* Norberto-Colon Lorenzana v. South American Restaurants Corp., No. 14-1698 (1st Cir. Aug. 21, 2015): “a chicken sandwich is not eligible for copyright protection. This makes good sense; neither the recipe nor the name Pechu Sandwich fits any of the…
I recently blogged about a lawsuit against YouTube for taking down a user’s video and relocating it to a different URL. Users get upset when their videos are removed-and-relocated because the process strips the video of its view count and…
Martinez worked at Yours Truly Consignment Shoppe. One of her co-workers was fired (along with another person) and posted the news on Facebook, adding how she hated working at Yours Truly for some time now. Martinez “liked” this post and…
This is a lawsuit alleging that Google and others circumvented cookie-blocking settings of popular browsers. Our blog post on the district court ruling here: “Google Wins Cookie Privacy Lawsuit”. Plaintiffs asserted federal and state claims. The court affirms dismissal of…
As Marshall McLuhan said, the medium is the message, and this principle is influencing online defamation jurisprudence. Judges frequently bend defamation standards for cases involving the rough-and-tumble world of online message boards (see, e.g., LeBlanc v. Skinner, Seldon v. Compass…
The basic copyright rule is clear: facts are not copyrightable; factual compilations can be. However, this simple rule masks considerable nuance. What is a “fact,” how does it differ from “non-facts,” what does it mean to “compile” facts, and when…
This lawsuit alleges that Amazon overstated the extent of discounts it offered customers (in stating the extent of the discount customer achieved when shopping at Amazon versus competing retailers). Amazon moved to compel arbitration, and the court grants the motion….
Tauheed Epps is a rapper known as “2 Chainz”. While backstage at one of his concerts, he allegedly filmed plaintiff while walking around backstage with his entourage, and repeatedly called her a “THOT” (which stands for “That Hoe Over There”)….