By Eric Goldman The NY Times runs an article on documentaries and fair use. It describes the thicket of copyright clearances necessary to reuse film clips in documentaries, which can be fatal to a documentary project. It gives one example…
By Eric Goldman O’Reilly Media is a publisher of technical books. They also operate some technical conferences, including the “O’Reilly Web 2.0 Conference.” They are in the process of registering a trademark in the phrase “Web 2.0” for Arranging and…
By Eric Goldman DiMeo v. Max, No. 06-1544 (E.D. Pa. May 26, 2006) In my world, it’s not a party until someone spills something. But in Anthony DiMeo’s world, it appears that it’s not a party until someone brings a…
By Eric Goldman Merck & Co. v. Mediplan Health Consulting, Inc., 2006 WL 1418616 (SDNY motion for reconsideration denied May 24, 2006) In late March, the legality of the search engine keyword advertising industry got very murky due to two…
By Eric Goldman It seems like every day there are new stories about teenagers doing stupid things online, but this story still struck me as interesting and unusual. The incident involves a website, Cheezus.com, that asks the user to submit…
By Eric Goldman The Edina Realty v. TheMLSOnline case, which held (among other things) that purchasing a trademarked keyword was a trademark use in commerce, has reportedly settled, according to the Associated Press. That leaves in place the conflict between…
By Eric Goldman Interesting article in the NYT about negative consumer attitudes towards brands. The article says that “cynical consumers [desire] not simply to avoid companies and brands they dislike but also to punish them.” Thus, consumers may use their…
By Eric Goldman KinderStart.com LLC v. Google, Inc., No. C 06-2057 RS (N.D. Cal. motions to dismiss and strike filed May 2, 2006) You may recall the pending lawsuit by KinderStart against Google for Google’s downgrade of KinderStart’s PageRank. My…
By Eric Goldman My blogging queue has gotten too thick. Here’s some items that caught my attention that I’ve been meaning to blog and simply haven’t gotten to. * I previously blogged about Chris Wilson, the website operator who allowed…
By Eric Goldman Sotelo v. Ebates Shopping.com, No. 06C-2531 (N.D. Ill. complaint filed May 5, 2006) The Collins Law Firm has filed a third class action lawsuit over adware, this time targeting Ebate’s Moe Money Maker client software. The complaint…