Roommates.com Motions over Batzel Briefing
By Eric Goldman Now that the Roommates.com case is pending en banc, let the games begin! The first round: the Fair Housing Councils want to submit a brief arguing why the Ninth Circuit Batzel precedent should be overturned in light…
Vendor of Illicit Phone Records Not Protected by 230–FTC v. Accusearch
By Eric Goldman Federal Trade Commission v. Accusearch, Inc., 06-CV-105-D (D. Wy. Sept. 28, 2007) Accusearch (a/k/a Abika) offers for sale records of telephone calls made by telephone subscribers. Abika doesn’t acquire the records itself directly from the phone companies;…
Blogger Wins Lawsuit Over Gripe Post–BidZirk v. Smith
By Eric Goldman BidZirk, LLC v. Smith, 2007 WL 3119445 (D.S.C. Oct. 22, 2007) I have previously blogged about BidZirk v. Smith, a flagship example of how a pernicious and misguided plaintiff with a thin skin can ruin a blogger’s…
Google’s Motion to Dismiss American Airlines’ Lawsuit Denied
By Eric Goldman American Airlines, Inc. v. Google, Inc., 4:07-cv-00487 (N.D. Tex. Oct. 24, 2007) In an uninsightful one-page order, the court has denied Google’s motion to dismiss American Airlines’ lawsuit over Google’s keyword advertising sales. Because the judge reveals…
Interesting Contract Interpretations in Eighth Circuit Fantasy Baseball Case–CBC v. MLB
By Eric Goldman CBC Distribution and Marketing, Inc., v. Major League Baseball Advanced Media, L.P., No. 06-3357/3358 (8th Cir. Oct. 16, 2007) You’ve already heard about this case, which held that MLB’s right of publicity claim against a fantasy baseball…
Telephone Numbers as Identity Authenticators–Abrams v. Facebook
By Eric Goldman I think it’s interesting to read these two developments side-by-side: Development #1: Abrams v. Facebook, Inc., C07-05378 (N.D. Cal. complaint filed Oct. 22, 2007). A woman initiates a class action lawsuit against Facebook because Facebook’s users send…
Utah Trademark Protection Act Dying a Slow Death
By Eric Goldman As I reported before, the backroom negotiations over the Utah Trademark Protection Act have produced a compromise where Utah would still create a mark registry but there would no legal consequences to selling/purchasing a registered mark. Obviously,…
AOIR Regulating Virtual Worlds Panel, and My Notes on Investment Expectations in Virtual Worlds
By Eric Goldman Last week at AOIR’s annual meeting (AOIR 8.0) in Vancouver, Greg Lastowka, James Grimmelmann, Tyler Ochoa and I presented on the topic of regulation of virtual worlds. My notes from the presentations are below. See Mark Bell’s…
Ticketmaster Wins Big Injunction in Hannah Montana Case, But Did the Public Interest Get Screwed?–Ticketmaster v. RMG
By Eric Goldman Ticketmaster L.L.C. v. RMG Technologies, Inc., 2007 WL 2988403 (C.D. Cal. Oct. 16, 2007) You may remember Ticketmaster’s multi-year battle against Tickets.com over data aggregation and deep linking. Ticketmaster never got a solid win in that case,…
Online Trust Conference Recap
By Eric Goldman On October 2, Santa Clara University held a half-day conference called “Trust Online.” This event was co-sponsored by the Center for Science, Technology and Society, the High Tech Law Institute, the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics and…