By John Ottaviani Doe v. MySpace, Inc., No. A-06-CA983-SS (W.D. Tex. 2/13/2007). “If anyone had a duty to protect Julie Doe, it was her parents, not MySpace.” (Sparks, J.) This is a HUGE win for MySpace! Plaintiff’s negligence and gross…
By Eric Goldman Google has [re]launched [see below] a crazy feature called “Click to Call” in Google Maps that allows users to initiate a telephone call from their search results. When you search on a business in Google Maps, the…
By Eric Goldman Rescuecom v. Google, 06-4881-CV (2nd Circuit appellee brief filed February 12, 2007) Google filed its brief in the Rescuecom v. Google appeal to the Second Circuit. Admittedly, my view may be biased, but I thought this was…
By Eric Goldman Google v. Copiepresse, No. 06/10.928/C (Tribunal de premiere instance de Bruxelles) (decision in French) (English translation) Google has lost (again) the Copiepresse copyright case in Belgium over Google News. In September 2006, the court initially ruled against…
By Eric Goldman MCQ’s Enterprises, Inc. v. Philadelphia Parking Authority, No. 07-0067 (E.D. Pa. Jan. 11, 2007) As part of making the cab system more consumer-friendly, Philadelphia created a “coordinated dispatch system” for taxicabs. Each taxicab would install GPS. Then,…
By Eric Goldman The Humane Society of the United States v. Amazon.com (DC Superior Ct complaint filed February 8, 2007) I’m going to start this post with two (relatively uncharacteristic for me) moralistic assertions that I think are largely beyond…
By Eric Goldman Jonthan Ezor has posted a short paper (10 pages + endnotes), Busting Blocks: Appropriate Legal Remedies For Wrongful Inclusion In Spam Filters Under U.S. Law, to SSRN. This article deals with thorny issues created by email blocklist…
By Eric Goldman * Marketers (including Microsoft) are paying authors to write Wikipedia entries. Surprised?! * Also on the topic of Wikipedia and marketers, Wikipedia has tagged all of their pages NOFOLLOW so that there’s no way a marketer or…
By Eric Goldman Earlier this week, the New York Attorney General’s (NYAG) office issued a press release with the blazing all caps headline: GROUNDBREAKING SETTLEMENTS HOLD ONLINE ADVERTISERS RESPONSIBLE FOR DISPLAYING ADS THROUGH DECEPTIVELY INSTALLED “ADWARE” PROGRAMS Groundbreaking…or groundless? After…
By Eric Goldman Google v. Central Mfg Inc., No. 07CV 385 (N.D. Ill. complaint filed Jan. 19, 2007) Leo Stoller is a notorious figure in the trademark community, especially among the hundreds (thousands?) of trademark owners he’s targeted with demands…