TIL: “Texas Tamale” Is an Enforceable Trademark–Texas Tamale v. CPUSA2
This case hit my alerts because of its discussion about keyword advertising, but first, I have to digest how the court got there. [Reminder: per Wikipedia, a tamale “is a traditional Mesoamerican dish made of masa, a dough made from…
Misidentified Person Loses Defamation Claim Against Tabloid–Bloom v. A360
Elon Musk “secretly” fathered twins with his subordinate Shivon Zilis. When the news came to light, it triggered a “tabloid feeding frenzy.” US Weekly published two articles on the story and posted to Instagram. Unfortunately, the photo US Weekly used…
Ninth Circuit Does More Damage to Section 230–Calise v. Meta
This is a lawsuit over scammy ads from Chinese advertisers. The plaintiffs claim Facebook “affirmatively invites” scammy ads by “actively soliciting, encouraging, and assisting scammers it knows, or should know, are using its platform to defraud Facebook users with deceptive…
Facebook Makes Some Progress Against a Scraper–Meta v. Voyager (Guest Blog Post)
by guest blogger Kieran McCarthy Companies looking to stop web scraping have suffered a losing streak in the Northern District of California recently. In February, Meta lost on Partial Summary Judgment against Bright Data on its breach of contract claim….
YouTube Isn’t Liable for User Uploads of Animal Abuse Videos–Lady Freethinker v. YouTube
YouTube’s TOS restricts the uploading of content depicting animal abuse, defined as “content that shows the malicious infliction of serious physical or psychological harm that causes an animal to suffer.” The TOS provides additional details about what YouTube considers impermissible…
Section 230 Applies to YouTube and Google Search Results–Montano v. Washington Department of Health
The court summarizes some of the plaintiff’s concerns: all [] [D]efendants acted with malice against [] [P]laintiff who is a member of a protected class “LGBTQ” as a self-identified gay individual, causing [] [P]laintiff to suffer monetary damages including loss…
Section 230 Applies to Publication of Court Documents–Medina v. Microsoft
In 2014, Medina sued Microsoft. Microsoft’s filings made some unredacted disclosures about Medina that were repeated in an unredacted court opinion, and those documents appeared on several websites that publish court documents. In 2020, Medina got the disclosures from the…
Ninth Circuit Rejects Another Lawsuit Over Account Termination–Mercola v. YouTube
I previously described this case: 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…
NC Supreme Court Blesses Unilateral TOS Amendment to Add an Arbitration Clause–Canteen v. Charlotte Metro CU
In 2014, Phillips opened a checking account at Charlotte Metro Credit Union (CMCU) and “entered into a standard membership agreement.” The agreement included a unilateral amendments provision saying that CMCU “may change the terms of this Agreement. We will notify…
Section 230 Doesn’t Apply to “Editorializing” About Third-Party Content–Marvin v. Lanctot
This case involves the Warroad High School girls’ hockey team. Warroad, Minnesota is located just a few miles south of the Canadian border, near the Northwest Angle, and hockey appears to be a big thing in town (e.g., the town…