By Eric Goldman Maughan v. Google Technology, Inc., 2006 WL 2874791 (Cal. App. Ct. Oct 11, 2006) In 2004, Mark Maughan sued Google over the way that Google crafts the site description part of its search results. As the minority…
By Eric Goldman Eric Goldman, A Coasean Analysis of Marketing, 2006 Wis. L. Rev. __ (forthcoming). In 2001, I had a career-altering epiphany while I was working at Epinions (this is the topic that prompted me to consider becoming a…
By Eric Goldman Last week, President Bush signed the Trademark Dilution Revision Act of 2006 into law. Ostensibly, this law was intended to overturn the Moseley case’s requirement that plaintiffs show “actual dilution” instead of a “likelihood of dilution.” However,…
By Eric Goldman National Federation of the Blind v. Target Corp., No. C 06-01801 (N.D. Cal. Sept. 6, 2006) This case got a fair amount of attention when it first came out, so I’m a little late to this party….
By Eric Goldman Today I was in Pittsburgh presenting a work-in-progress talk called “Online Word of Mouth and Its Implications for Trademark Law.” My slides. Frank Pasquale’s and Rebecca Tushnet’s comments on the presentation.
By Eric Goldman Fascinating contraposition of stories on the Google and Yahoo home pages run by the Washington Post and BusinessWeek, respectively. From BusinessWeek: Yahoo makes its home page decisions strictly by following user clicks. They capture user clickstreams across…
By Eric Goldman Some stories that caught my eye in September: * Digg users are gaming the Digg algorithm. Greg Linden’s take. Naturally, Digg is fighting back by tweaking its algorithm to reduce the effect of gaming and preserve some…
By Eric Goldman Rescuecom Corp. v. Google, Inc., No. 5:04-CV-1055 (N.D.N.Y. Sept. 28, 2006). You can find the ruling here (WARNING: 1.7MB file) Introduction and the 1-800 Contacts Precedent Last year, the Second Circuit issued a major ruling in the…
By Eric Goldman Pop Warner Little Scholars, Inc. v. New Hampshire Youth Football & Spirit Conference, 2006 WL 2591480 (D. N.H. Sept. 11, 2006) Metatag lawsuits befuddle me for two reasons. First, and most importantly, KEYWORD METATAGS ARE IRRELEVANT from…
By John Ottaviani High school students have been battling with and lampooning their assistant principals for generations. Last Spring, students in San Antonio, Texas, applied 21st century technology to the practice, when they allegedly set up a profile for their…