Sixth Circuit Dismisses Online Jawboning Case–Changizi v. DHHS
[Note: this post does NOT cover the Fifth Circuit’s ruling in Missouri v. Biden, which also addressed government jawboning regarding COVID misinformation. Missouri v. Biden, 2023 WL 5821788 (5th Cir. Sept. 8, 2023). The Fifth Circuit ruled that some government…
Schedule A (SAD Scheme) Plaintiff Sanctioned for “Fraud on the Court”–Xped v. Respect the Look
This is one of the thousands of “Schedule A” cases, a phenomenon I’ve labeled the “SAD Scheme.” (Technically, the defendants in this case are enumerated on “Exhibit 1” instead of “Schedule A,” but same thing). The court describes the phenomenon:…
Facebook Can Reject Unwanted Ads–Newton v. Meta
This is yet another online content removal lawsuit, and it reaches the obvious and inevitable result that dozens of cases have reached before it. The plaintiffs sought to run Facebook ads for the movie “Beautiful Blue Eyes,” a movie about…
Anti-Vaxxer’s Lawsuit Over Channel Removal Fails–Mercola v. YouTube
Joseph Mercola ran a YouTube channel with 300k subscribers and 50M views. YouTube removed the channel for violating its medical misinformation policy (Mercola apparently peddled anti-vax views). Mercola sued YouTube for the usual things and got the usual outcomes. Mercola…
Lawsuit Over Twitter Suspension Fails Again–Zhang v. Twitter
A Twitter user sued over his account suspension. The court dismissed the case without prejudice. Blog post coverage of that ruling here. The user tried again. Same result. Section 230. Twitter qualifies for the standard three-element test for 230: Twitter…
Court Denies Injunction in Competitive Keyword Ad Lawsuit–Nursing CE Central v. Colibri
This is a competitive keyword advertising lawsuit. The plaintiff has a trademark registration for the “Nursing CE Central” mark for providing continuing education for nurses. [Note: if it’s not obvious, “CE” is an abbreviation for “continuing education.” Just like we…
Preemptive Challenge to California’s Mandatory Editorial Transparency Law Lacks Standing–Minds v. Bonta
The plaintiffs in this case are Minds, Inc., Tim Pool, the Babylon Bee, and National Religious Broadcasters, which are (respectively): “a social networking app, an active social media content creator, a satirical news website, and a nonpartisan association of Christian…
YouTube Still Isn’t a State Actor–RFK Jr. v. Google
In 2020, the Ninth Circuit held that YouTube was not a state actor. It still isn’t. The plaintiff here is RFK Jr., the leading presidential candidate among the #MAGA base of the Democratic party. Even his relatives have condemned him…
Web Scraping for Me, But Not for Thee (Guest Blog Post)
by guest blogger Kieran McCarthy There are few, if any, legal domains where hypocrisy is as baked into the ecosystem as it is with web scraping. Some of the biggest companies on earth—including Meta and Microsoft—take aggressive, litigious approaches to…
My Comments to the USPTO About the SAD Scheme and Anticounterfeiting/Antipiracy Efforts
[I submitted the following comments to the USPTO] __ To: United States Patent and Trademark Office, Department of Commerce From: Prof. Eric Goldman, Associate Dean for Research, Santa Clara University School of Law Date: August 22, 2023 Re: Comments regarding…