CAN-Spam-a-Friend?–Hoang v. Reunion.com
Hoang v. Reunion.com sidesteps an eagerly anticipated legal dispute over the legality of commercial address book scraping and ‘send-to-a-friend’ emails, and also highlights the damage that can cascade when a federal Circuit Court woefully misreads a statute. By Ethan Ackerman…
Federal Circuit Comes to Santa Clara University Next Week
By Eric Goldman Next week, a three judge panel of the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals will be visiting Santa Clara University and hearing oral arguments in four cases. You can read the briefs of the cases to be heard….
Stockholder Derivative Action Against Yahoo Based on Click Fraud Rebuffed–Brodsky v. Yahoo
By Eric Goldman Brodsky v. Yahoo! Inc., 2008 WL 4531815 (N.D. Cal. Oct. 7, 2008). The Justia page. Previous blog coverage. You may recall this stockholder derivative lawsuit against Yahoo alleging that Yahoo hyped its stock prices by overstating its…
Defamation Lawsuit Against Blogger Dismissed on Jurisdictional Grounds–Fahmy v. Hogge
By Eric Goldman Fahmy v. Hogge, 2008 WL 4614322 (C.D. Cal. Oct. 14, 2008). The Justia page. This lawsuit involves the blog hogonice.com (Hog on Ice). The blog’s topical coverage includes “Guns, God, Food, Beer, Tools, Politics, and Whining,” and…
American Airlines Sues Yahoo for Selling Keyword Advertising
By Eric Goldman American Airlines, Inc. v. Yahoo! Inc., 4:2008cv00626 (N.D. Tex. complaint filed Oct. 17, 2008). The Justia page. Here’s a lawsuit I never expected. Fresh off their settlement with Google, American Airlines is suing Yahoo for selling keyword…
Economics of Reputational Information Talks
By Eric Goldman In the past 2 weeks, I traveled around the country presenting different versions of my Economics of Reputational Information research project to three slightly different audiences. As a result, this troika of presentations provides a nice snapshot…
Search Engine “Cache” Function Covered by Implied License–Parker v. Yahoo
By Eric Goldman Parker v. Yahoo, Inc., 2008 WL 4410095 (E.D. Pa. Sept. 25, 2008). Gordon Roy Parker is a serial pro se Internet law plaintiff and putative owner of copyrights in seemingly misogynistic works such as “Outfoxing the Foxes”…
September 2008 Quick Links, Part 3
By Eric Goldman eBay * Universal Grading Service v. eBay, Inc. More fallout from the National Numismatic v. eBay case–another lawsuit alleging antitrust and defamation because eBay designated some coin rating services as preferred and impliedly devalued others. * Windsor…
September 2008 Quick Links, Part 2
By Eric Goldman Copyrights * In the Harry Potter fair use case, the court declared that the Lexicon encyclopedia isn’t fair use. * The judge declared a mistrial in the Jammie Thomas case. * Designer Skin v. S&L Vitamins has…
September 2008 Quick Links, Part 1 (Special Trademarks/Domain Names Edition)
By Eric Goldman For some reason, September was an unusually busy Cyberlaw month, so I’m going to have at least 3 installations of my quick links series. This post focuses just on trademark- and domain name-related items from last month….