Blogger Doing Investigative Research Defeats Personal Jurisdiction–FireClean v. Tuohy
FireClean sells an eponymous cleaning oil, FIREClean, “advertised to reduce carbon residue buildup in firearms.” Andrew Tuohy blogs about firearms at the Vuurwapen blog (Dutch for “firearms”). Allegations swirled that FIREClean was just Crisco. Tuohy worked with a University of…
Search Engine Snippets Protected By Section 230–O’Kroley v. Fastcase
The plaintiff’s vanity Google search results included the following snippet: “indecency with a child in Trial Court Cause N . . . Colin O’Kroley v Pringle.” The linked result (to Google Book’s indexing of Texas Advance Sheet–see image) contained a…
Message Board Operator May Be Liable For Moderator’s Content–Enigma v. Bleeping
It’s been a brutal year for Section 230 jurisprudence, and the hits keep coming. In today’s case, the parties ran into a judge who seemed unshakably determined–for reasons I can’t determine–to deny the motion to dismiss. This produces an outlier…
Sideloading Service Defeats Copyright Infringement Claims–BWP v. Polyvore
BWP Media is a celebrity photo agency and a repeat online copyright plaintiff. Polyvore is…well, I don’t really get what they do. They say the site “is a new way to discover and shop for things you love in fashion,…
Was Melania Trump’s Plagiarism Also Copyright Infringement? (Guest Blog Post)
By Guest Blogger Tyler Ochoa The first night of the Republican National Convention generated quite a bit of controversy, as Melania Trump was accused of plagiarizing a key passage in her speech from a similar passage in Michelle Obama’s speech…
Internet Troll’s “Political Shenanigans” Are Protected Speech–State v. Hirschman (Guest Blog Post)
By guest blogger Prof. Jane Bambauer, University of Arizona James E. Rodgers College of Law Aaron Hirschman, a self-proclaimed “Internet troll,” posted the following message on Craigslist: Wanna make an easy $20 for voting? (Downtown Bend) Are you interested in…
Twitter May Be Liable for Sending Texts to Recycled Cellphone Numbers–Nunes v. Twitter
This is a TCPA lawsuit against Twitter. The claims are based on text messages sent to phone numbers where the subscriber was a Twitter user and signed up to receive text updates but later the phone number got recycled to…
Yelp Isn’t Liable For User-Submitted Photos Of Businesses–Albert v. Yelp
The last time I blogged about a lawyer who sued Yelp for defamation, I spilled 3,000 words (and shed many tears). Fortunately for my mental health and your reading queue, I’m pleased to report that today’s case has better–and more…
Q2 2016 Quick Links, Part 5 (Miscellaneous)
E-Commerce/Sharing Economy * Reuters: EU cautions governments against banning Uber, Airbnb * Needle Inc. v. Department of Workforce Services, 2016 WL 1729547 (Utah Ct. App. April 28, 2016). Finding that product advocates, who did online customer chatting on an ad…
Courts Approve Terms of Service-Based Arbitration Clauses for Uber and Groupon
[Note: this is part 2 of TOS Arbitration Day. You can access Eric’s post from this morning here.] Online terms, and in particular arbitration clauses, have been subject to attack by plaintiffs’ lawyers. News reports have also raised the specter…