Facebook Isn’t Liable For Fake User Account Containing Non-Consensual Pornography–Caraccioli v. Facebook (Forbes Cross-Post)
Franco Caraccioli is a third-year law student in San Diego. For reasons not explained in the opinion, someone created a fake Facebook account named “Franco Caracciolijerkingman” and posted photos and videos of Caraccioli “sexually arousing or pleasuring himself.” (All facts…
PGA Can Turn Caddies Into ‘Human Billboards’–Hicks v. PGA Tour
As I’ve written before, marketers are in a never-ending quest to find and exploit new ways to capture consumer attention. With the rise of DVR ad-avoidance technologies, marketers keep finding more unskippable broadcast TV ad exposures like product placements. And…
Google Defeats Lawsuit Over Duplicate Content Penalty–D’Agostino v. Appliances Buy Phone
D’Agostino provided web development services to the Appliances Buy Phone (ABP) website. He wanted to sharpen his SEO skills, so he agreed in 2009 with the ABP owners to create a mirror version of ABP, called Appliances4Sale (AFS) as a…
Why The Subway ‘Footlong’ Lawsuits Fell Short (Forbes Cross-Post)
You may recall the lawsuit against Subway Restaurants for selling “12 inch” and “footlong” sandwiches that were allegedly less than 12 inches long. The case attracted lots of media attention and consumer sniggers because of Subway’s ubiquity (and the endless…
Posting Vacation Photos To Facebook Costs An Employee His Job–Jones v. Accentia (Forbes Cross-Post)
[Note: inexplicably, over at Forbes, this became my most-read blog post ever, with about a quarter-million views–even though it’s a short, breezy and quickly written post that I posted during the dead time of Sunday mid-morning.] Before the Internet, people…
Court Beats Down Another Competitive Keyword Advertising Lawsuit–Beast Sports v. BPI
If you’ve been keeping up with the blog over the past several years, you already know that competitive keyword advertising lawsuits consistently lose in court. So in that sense, today’s blog post isn’t telling you anything new. Yet, it’s still…
Section 230 Doesn’t Protect Summaries of Third Party Remarks–Diamond Ranch Academy v. Filer
Diamond Ranch Academy runs a “residential youth treatment facility” in Utah. Chelsea Filer (nee Chelsea Papciak) runs a website, DRASurvivors.com, critical of Diamond Ranch Academy. Diamond Ranch Academy sued her for defamation and tortious interference in Utah. For reasons not…
Court Orders Uber To Control Its Google Search Results
What happens when national trademarks, used on the borderless Internet, conflict with regional trademarks? This is one of the most venerable topics in Internet Law; see, e.g., the Blue Note case from 20 years ago. More recently, Jake blogged about…
High Schooler’s “Murder” Tweet Isn’t “Cyberstalking”–State v. Kohonen
Ruh roh. Teens and Twitter. What could possibly go wrong? In 8th grade, SG reported Jessica Kohonen’s behavior, which led to her suspension. [Note: the court uses the alias JK in the opinion but the caption has Jessica’s full name….
Surveying Ten Years Of Top Internet Law Developments (Forbes Cross-Post)
I’ve been writing an annual list of top Internet Law developments for a decade, so I thought it might be fun to look back at my #1 ranked development in each of the past 10 years. Let’s take a stroll…