Second Circuit Muddies The Trademark Nominative Use Doctrine–ISC2 v. Security University
The nominative use doctrine allows third party references to trademark owners using the trademarks they chose as their preferred descriptors. Without a robust and well-functioning nominative use doctrine, trademark owners can have too much control over their brands–they can shut…
Talk on Section 230 and Consumer Reviews
In April, I gave a talk at the University of Sussex on Section 230 as economy policy by encouraging consumer reviews that improve marketplaces. If this sounds vaguely familiar, you’re not imagining things. I’ve been working on this paper since…
Is Uber Liable When Drivers Sexually Abuse Passengers? (Forbes Cross-Post)
Uber allegedly has over 300,000 drivers. In a population that large, inevitably some bad apples will do stupid or illegal things. Uber tries to curb such behavior by doing background investigations (which it has also been sued for) and removing…
Judge Scolds Litigant For Making Facebook Account “Private” During Litigation–Thurmond v. Bowman
This is a social media evidence ruling. Plaintiff filed a Fair Housing Act lawsuit alleging that a prospective landlord decline to rent an apartment after learning that two of plaintiff’s children would be living with her. The lease denial allegedly…
Talk on Evolving Trends In High Tech Legal Education
In April, I spoke at the British and Irish Law Education and Technology Association (BILETA) annual meeting at the University of Hertfordshire in Hatfield, England. BILETA is an academic work-in-progress conference series for British/Irish cyberlaw and IT/IP professors, so I…
FTC Wins Deception Case Over Faux User-Generated Content–Fanning v. FTC
John Fanning challenged the FTC findings that the website he developed, named Jerk.com, materially misrepresented its attributes. On appeal, the First Circuit affirms. Jerk.com resembled Ripoff Report, but for people. The court’s description of the site and its offerings are…
Google Isn’t Required To De-Index Negative Ripoff Report–Fakhrian v. Google (Forbes Cross-Post)
We’ve frequently seen that many people want a “magic wand” that would allow them to decide exactly what search results Google shows for their names. Hence, the popularity of the so-called “right to be forgotten” in Europe, with nearly 1.5M…
Marquette University’s Troubling Report on Faculty Blogger (Guest Blog Post)
By Guest Blogger Stephen F. Diamond At the heart of an important and deeply troubling faculty committee report involving academic freedom at Marquette University is the conclusion that a blog post by a tenured political scientist was “reckless” and thus…
The Pros and (Scary) Cons of the New EU Trade Secret Directive, Part 2 (Guest Blog Post)
By Guest Blogger Sharon K. Sandeen Part One of this post gave an overview of the new EU Trade Secret Directive (the “TS Directive”) that will be effective shortly (on the twentieth day after it is published in the Official…
Facebook Gets Bad Ruling In Face-Scanning Privacy Case–In re Facebook Biometric Information Privacy Litigation
The plaintiffs allege Facebook’s face-scanning functionality (that underlies its “tag suggestion” feature) violates the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act. Several lawsuits were originally filed in Illinois, but the parties agreed to transfer the cases to the Northern District of California,…