Redbox Can be Liable Under the Video Privacy Protection Act for Failure to Purge Video Rental Records — Sterk v. Redbox
[Post by Venkat Balasubramani] Sterk v. Redbox, 11 c 1729 (N.D. Ill. Aug 19, 2011) Redbox is a company which rents DVDs to customers from automated, self-service kiosks, typically charging $1 per rental. The customer is required to return the…
eBay Gets 47 USC 230 Dismissal of Products Liability Claim–Inman v. Technicolor
By Eric Goldman Inman v. Technicolor USA, Inc., 2011 WL 5829024 (W.D. Pa. Nov. 18, 2011) Today, I’m thankful for 47 USC 230. Whenever I think about it, I am still incredulous the law is on the books. Nowadays, Congress’…
Court Awards Damages for Wrongful Disruption of Web Presence — Ordonez v. Icon Sky Holdings
[Post by Venkat Balasubramani] Ordonez v. Icon Sky Holdings LLC, 10-cv-60156-PAS (S.D. Fla. Aug. 30, 2011) This was another dispute involving two parties who jockeyed for control of an online presence. I guess you could say that one “jacked” the…
Can A Copyright Be Assigned By Email?–Hermosilla v. Coca-Cola
By John Ottaviani with comments from Venkat and Eric Vergara Hermosilla v. The Coca Cola Company, No. 11-11317 (11th Cir. Nov. 3, 2011). Can a copyright be assigned by an exchange of emails? Section 204(a) of the Copyright Act provides…
App Developer RockYou Settles Privacy Lawsuit–Claridge v. RockYou
[Post by Venkat Balasubramani with comments from Eric] Claridge v. RockYou, 09-CV-6032-PJH (N.D. Cal.; Nov. 14, 2011) (settlement pending court approval) Eric and I previously blogged about the opinion in Claridge v. RockYou, where the court tentatively recognized the theory…
Why I Oppose the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)/E-PARASITES Act
By Eric Goldman [Note: I’ve been working on this post for about 2 weeks, so my apologies if my comments are duplicative of the intervening discussion about the bill] The DMCA online safe harbors have worked pretty well over the…
LinkedIn Beats Referrer URL Privacy Class Action on Article III Standing Grounds–Low v. LinkedIn
[Post by Venkat Balasubramani with comments from Eric] Low v. LinkedIn, 2011 WL 5509848 (N.D. Ca.; Nov. 11, 2011) Low brought a putative class action against LinkedIn, complaining about the fact that LinkedIn “allows transmission of users’ personally identifiable browsing…
Courts Says Employer’s Lawsuit Against Ex-Employee Over Retention and Use of Twitter Account can Proceed–PhoneDog v. Kravitz
[Post by Venkat Balasubramani] PhoneDog v. Kravitz, 2011 WL 5415612 (N.D. Ca.; Nov. 8, 2011) Another day, another post-employment dispute over a social media account. In this case, Noah Kravitz worked for PhoneDog, which is an “interactive mobile news and…
Employers Demanding the Right to Remotely Wipe Employees’ Phones?
By Eric Goldman I got the following email from one of my students (I edited a little to increase the anonymity): Recently, my spouse’s company announced that it is going to implement a new policy regarding those employees using their…
Ohio Court of Appeals: Lawyer-Plaintiff Can’t Sue for Misleading Email Ads Which he Knew Were Misleading — Cicero v. American Satelitte
[Post by Venkat Balasubramani] Cicero v. American Satellite, Inc., 2011-Ohio-4918 (Ohio Ct. App. Sept. 27, 2011) [pdf] Cicero is a lawyer who lives and practices in the state of Ohio. He sued defendant based on 85 marketing emails sent on…