2H 2015 Quick Links, Part 5 (Section 230, Pornography)
Section 230 * Backpage.com, LLC v. Dart, 2015 WL 7717221 (7th Cir. Nov. 30, 2015) In his public capacity as a sheriff of a major county (Cook County has a population of more than 5.2 million), Sheriff Dart is not…
2H 2015 Quick Links, Part 4 (Content Regulation & More)
* Miquel Peguera: “The man who won the right-to-be-forgotten case in the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has now been denied the right to suppress links to comments about that case by the Spanish Data Protection Authority…
2H 2015 Quick Links, Part 3 (Trespass To Chattels, Privacy/Security)
Trespass to Chattels * Crapps v. State, 2015 WL 8114247 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. Dec. 8, 2015). This is a revenge porn case, and the defendant was convicted of violating an anti-stalking protection order. However, in this ruling, the court…
2H 2015 Quick Links, Part 2 (Patents, Trademarks, Other IP)
Patents * ClearCorrect Operating, LLC v. International Trade Com’n, 2015 WL 6875205 (Fed. Cir. Nov. 10, 2015): ITC has jurisdiction only over “material things,” not digital content. An obvious but much needed ruling. * Washington Post: Patents are a terrible…
2H 2015 Quick Links, Part 1 (Copyright)
* Norberto-Colon Lorenzana v. South American Restaurants Corp., No. 14-1698 (1st Cir. Aug. 21, 2015): “a chicken sandwich is not eligible for copyright protection. This makes good sense; neither the recipe nor the name Pechu Sandwich fits any of the…
YouTube Wins Another Case Over Removing And Relocating User Videos (Forbes Cross-Post)
I recently blogged about a lawsuit against YouTube for taking down a user’s video and relocating it to a different URL. Users get upset when their videos are removed-and-relocated because the process strips the video of its view count and…
Bashing Your Litigation Opponent in an Online Message Board? Go For It! (Forbes Cross-Post)
As Marshall McLuhan said, the medium is the message, and this principle is influencing online defamation jurisprudence. Judges frequently bend defamation standards for cases involving the rough-and-tumble world of online message boards (see, e.g., LeBlanc v. Skinner, Seldon v. Compass…
Google Defeats Copyright Lawsuit Over Waze Data (Forbes Cross-Post)
The basic copyright rule is clear: facts are not copyrightable; factual compilations can be. However, this simple rule masks considerable nuance. What is a “fact,” how does it differ from “non-facts,” what does it mean to “compile” facts, and when…
Google Play Defeats Lawsuit Over Unauthorized Bank Charges–Harvey v. Google
In March 2013, Susan Harvey bought a game via Google Play, which required her to electronically link her bank account. She alleges that hundreds of unauthorized charges hit her bank account, totaling thousands of dollars. Google allegedly offered to make…
Are Legal Restrictions On Disparaging Personal Names Unconstitutional?–In re The Slants (Guest Blog Post)
By Guest Blogger Laura Heymann [Eric’s introduction: Prof. Heymann has spent more time thinking about the Law of Naming People and Things than anyone else I know. I asked her to weigh in on the potential implications of the Federal…