If Your Trademark Case Depends on Showing Initial Interest Confusion, Save Your Money–Select Comfort v. John Baxter
I’ve bashed the initial interest confusion doctrine for decades. It’s one of the worst doctrinal “innovations” in trademark law–ever. However, you might have noticed that I haven’t blogged many initial interest confusion cases recently. Why? Because the phrase rarely shows…
Another Section 512(f) Case Fails–ISE v. Longarzo
This ruling doesn’t break a lot of new doctrinal ground. Another 512(f) case fails–nothing new. I’m blogging mostly for completeness and as a follow up to my May post remarking that a 512(f) case survived a motion to dismiss. At…
Fair Use for “Meme” Can’t Be Decided on Motion to Dismiss—Philpot v. Alternet Media (Guest Blog Post)
by guest blogger Stacey Lantagne Memes implicate many legal issues, one of the major ones being copyright infringement and fair use. The copyright dispute here revolves around a photograph of Willie Nelson taken by the plaintiff, Philpot, and posted to…
Eighth Lawsuit Against Social Media Providers for “Materially Supporting Terrorists” Fails–Copeland v. Twitter
This is another 1-800 LAW FIRM lawsuit against social media providers for allegedly materially supporting terrorists. Like the others, it fails. In light of the Ninth Circuit’s Fields opinion, dismissing a similar suit on proximate cause grounds, this opinion doesn’t…
The EU Anti-Geoblocking Regulation Becomes Effective Today (Guest Blog Post)
by guest blogger Marketa Trimble On December 3, 2018, the European Union’s Anti-Geoblocking Regulation enters into force. Its effects should be confined to the European Union’s internal market, yet the Regulation will also affect U.S. businesses serving customers in the European…
Everything You Wanted to Know About Emojis and the Law
For the past couple of years, I have invested significantly in all things emojis. This post rounds up everything I’ve done during that period. 1) Emojis and the Law Article I’m pleased to announce the final version of my paper,…
512(h) Doesn’t Preempt Doe Unmasking Lawsuits–Strike 3 v. Doe
This is my second Strike 3 blog post this week. I imagine this won’t be the last. In this case, a Doe defendant sought to quash the unmasking subpoena submitted to his/her IAP. The defendant argued that the unmasking subpoena was…
Failure-to-Warn Claim Against Match.com Fails–Beckman v. Match.com
The Ninth Circuit’s Doe 14 v. Internet Brands and Beckman v. Match.com rulings held that Section 230 immunity did not apply to failure-to-warn claims. Those rulings revived both cases and provided some encouragement to plaintiffs more generally. However, this hope…
Restricting Competitive Keyword Ads Is Anti-Competitive–FTC v. 1-800 Contacts
Starting in 2002 and continuing for about a decade, 1-800 Contacts systematically locked up many of its online contact lenses retail competitors into settlement agreements that prohibited the parties from bidding on each other’s trademarks at the search engines. Perhaps…
Ninth Circuit Easily Dismisses YouTube Remove-and-Relocate Case–Darnaa v. Google
This is one of the many lawsuits against YouTube for removing videos and relocating them to a new URL, which resets the view count and breaks inbound links. This case, involving the “musician” Darnaa, generated a little buzz a couple…