A Single Emoji Could Constitute Securities Fraud–In re Bed Bath & Beyond
This case involves Ryan Cohen, who made a fortune running Chewy.com and then switched his interests to meme stocks. He bought a 9% interest in the failing retailer Bed Bath…
Chegg Is Likely to Prevail on Its Anti-Scraping Contracts Claim…But Doesn’t Get an Injunction–Chegg v. Doe (Guest Blog Post)
by guest blogger Kieran McCarthy Most web-scraping cases fit into one of two categories: Cases where companies are innovating with data in ways that data hosts/owners don’t like, and courts…
Ninth Circuit Highlights the Messy Law of Contributory Trademark Infringement Online–YYGM v. RedBubble
Redbubble provides an online marketplace for print-on-demand items. Unlike other print-on-demand vendors, Redbubble outsources everything but the marketing and payment processing functions. Third-party user-merchants upload the images; third-party contract manufacturers…
DC Circuit Upholds FOSTA’s Constitutionality (By Narrowing It)–Woodhull v. U.S.
FOSTA is terrible social policy that hurt multiple communities without clearly benefiting any community, but its bad results don’t automatically make it unconstitutional. In response to a facial constitutional challenge…
Amazon Can Freely End Book Reviewer’s Authoring Privileges–Haywood v. Amazon
Charles Haywood wrote book reviews at Amazon. He says “his style tends to be megalomaniacal and apocalyptic. He likes to fight.” (For more, see this story and his own self-analysis…
An E-Commerce Site Tried to Form Its TOS Three Different Ways. None of Them Worked–Chabolla v. ClassPass
The plaintiffs claim they signed up for a ClassPass membership but got unexpectedly auto-renewed. (ClassPass appears to be an aggregator of third-party fitness classes). ClassPass sought to send the case…
Contractual Control over Information Goods after ML Genius v. Google (Guest Blog Post)
by guest blogger Prof. Guy Rub, The Ohio State University Michael E. Moritz College of Law The copyright – contract tension Stewart Brand famously said that information wants to be…
Trademark Extraterritoriality: Abitron v. Hetronic Doesn’t Go the Distance (Guest Blog Post)
By Guest Bloggers Margaret Chon and Christine Haight Farley [Margaret Chon is a Professor of Law at Seattle University School of Law, and Christine Haight Farley is a Professor of…
Armslist Defeats Lawsuits Over Illegal Gun Sales (Without Section 230’s Help)–Webber v. Armslist
Armslist publishes users’ classified ads for guns. Two estates sued Armslist for allegedly facilitating illegal gun sales that led to murders. My blog post on the district court rulings. Section…
Court Finally Rejects “Discrimination” Lawsuit Against YouTube–Divino v. Google
This long-running lawsuit started in 2019. When I first blogged this case in January 2021, I wrote: This lawsuit, like many others before it, claims that UGC services like YouTube…