More Evidence That Competitive Keyword Advertising Benefits Trademark Owners (Forbes Cross-Post)
By Eric Goldman Many trademark owners hate that rivals can bid on Google AdWords ads triggered by their trademarks, a process I call “competitive keyword advertising.” Trademark owners (and many judges) often assume that a Google search on a trademark…
Rationalizing (?) the Hart and Keller v. EA Sports Publicity Rights Rulings (Guest Blog Post)
By Guest Blogger Tyler Ochoa [Eric’s note: this is a long blog post from my colleague Tyler. It does a great job demonstrating that the interplay between the First Amendment and the publicity rights is complete anarchy, which isn’t surprising…
Gun Classified Ads Website Isn’t Liable for Murder–Vesely v. Armslist
By Eric Goldman Vesely v. Armslist, LLC , 1:13-cv-00607 (N.D. Ill. July 29, 2013) Armslist runs an online classified ad website for guns. After finding each other on Armslist, Ladera sold a gun to Smirnov, who used the gun to…
The Latest Attempt to Use Copyright Law to Remove Negative Consumer Reviews–Small Justice v. Xcentric (Forbes Cross-Post)
By Eric Goldman [Note: as you know, I closed comments on this blog in 2006 because of a virulent comment spam attack. Sometimes I miss having comments, but then again, seeing the comments I got at Forbes in response to…
Book Review: “The Little Book of Foodie Law”
By Eric Goldman Cecil C. Kuhne, The Little Book of Foodie Law (Little Books) [Amazon affiliate link] [Note: I checked out this book because someday I hope to offer a Food Law course, and I wanted to see if this…
YouTube Gets Easy Section 230 Win–Gavra v Google
By Eric Goldman Gavra v. Google Inc., 2013 WL 3788241 (N.D. Cal. July 17, 2013). The complaint. I [heart] easy 47 USC 230 cases. Here, a Romanian lawyer felt 13 YouTube clips, posted by an ex-client, defamed her. After sending…
Recap of Stanford E-Commerce Conference Panel on Takedown Notices
By Eric Goldman Last month, I attended Stanford Law School’s annual E-commerce Law Conference, one of my favorite conferences of the year because of its subject material and the chance to hang out with so many friends. This year, the…
Book Review: “Mail-Order Mysteries: Real Stuff from Old Comic Book Ads”
By Eric Goldman Kirk Demarais, Mail-Order Mysteries: Real Stuff from Old Comic Book Ads! (2011) [Amazon affiliate link] This was a kind gift from my colleague Kyle Graham. This is a well-conceived and well-executed book about the cheap novelties that…
JDate Member Agreement Upheld–Zaltz v. JDate (Forbes Cross-Post)
By Eric Goldman Lisa Zaltz v. JDate, 2013 WL 3369073 (E.D.N.Y. July 8, 2013). Lisa Zaltz is a former member of JDate (a property of Spark Networks). She is unhappy with JDate for a laundry list of reasons (I had a…
Tenth Circuit Kills the Initial Interest Confusion Doctrine–1-800 Contacts v. Lens.com
By Eric Goldman 1-800 Contacts, Inc. v. Lens.com, Inc., 2013 WL 3665627 (10th Cir. July 16, 2013) Here are some things I hate: * duplicitous litigants, such as plaintiffs who buy competitive keyword advertising yet sue competitors for doing the…