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…
Top 10 Internet Law Developments of 2015 (Forbes Cross-Post)
I’m pleased to present my annual list of top Internet Law developments from the past year. As the years go by, increasingly the most important Internet Law developments/crackdowns are occurring internationally, but I tried to focus on U.S. developments. 10)…
Senate Judiciary Committee Passes Amended Defend Trade Secrets Act. What Changed? (Guest Blog Post)
By Guest Blogger Sharon K. Sandeen The Defend Trade Secrets Act (S. 1890) passed out of the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary today, but not before it was amended to address a number of concerns that were voiced by…
What’s the Legal Definition of a “Social Media Site”? Uh… (People v. Lopez)
I’ve previously discussed “social media exceptionalism,” i.e., the development of legal rules applicable only to social media predicated on the assumption that it’s somehow unique, special or different from other media, online or off. I’ve never found a principled justification…