By Eric Goldman The week before Thanksgiving, I attended an unusual symposium sponsored by the University of Denver Law Review entitled “Cyber Civil Rights: New Challenges for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties in our Networked Age.” The symposium covered standard…
[Post by Venkat] The Florida Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee issued an (advisory) opinion [link] which included the following question and answer: [May] a judge may add lawyers who may appear before the judge as “friends” on a social networking site,…
By Eric Goldman FragranceNet.com, Inc. v. Les Parfums, Inc., 2009 WL 4609268 (E.D.N.Y. Dec. 8, 2009) In 2007, FragranceNet suffered a stinging loss when it sued a competitor, FragranceX.com, for buying its trademarks as advertising keywords. Interpreting the 1-800 Contacts…
By Eric Goldman Blues Destiny Records LLC v. Google, Inc., 3:09-cv-00538-WS-EMT (N.D. Fla. complaint filed Dec. 7, 2009) [warning: 1.5MB PDF] Blues Destiny Records, a small Blues music label, doesn’t like RapidShare, a website that allows users to publish files,…
[Post by Venkat] The Ninth Circuit recently rejected [pdf] two appeals brought by CAN-SPAM plaintiff Asis Internet Services. The trial court granted summary judgment in favor of Azoogle and awarded costs. See Eric’s earlier blog post on that ruling. Asis…
By Eric Goldman Fair Isaac Corp. v. Experian Information Solutions Inc., 2009 WL 4263699 (D. Minn. Nov. 25, 2009) This is an interesting and complicated lawsuit that hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves. Fair Isaac produces the ubiquitous “FICO” credit…
[Post by Venkat] A federal court in Missouri recently rejected a class action brought by consumer plaintiffs on standing grounds. Given the long line of consumer plaintiffs who have suffered a similar fate I thought this case was somewhat unexceptional,…
By Eric Goldman In mid-November, I attended a conference at Case Western Reserve University School of Law in Cleveland, Ohio entitled “Signifiers in Cyberspace: Domain Names & Online Trademarks.” My notes: David Fewer spoke about Canada’s WHOIS policy. The old…
[Post by Venkat] The “spam filter ate my electronic filing notice” excuse was an inevitable byproduct of the CM/ECF electronic filing system now in place in federal courts. As expected, courts have not been very sympathetic to this excuse. In…
By Eric Goldman Riggs v. MySpace, Inc., 2:09-cv-03073-GHK-CT (C.D. Cal. Sept. 17, 2009) This case has received some modest attention throughout its history (including a quick mention here when the court upheld MySpace’s user agreement), but the district court’s dismissal…