Amazon’s Merchandising of Its Search Results Doesn’t Violate Trademark Law (Forbes Cross-Post)
By Eric Goldman Multi Time Machine, Inc. v. Amazon.com, 2013 WL 638888 (C.D. Cal. Feb. 20, 2013). The complaint. No retailer does a better job of cross-selling to its customers than Amazon.com ($AMZN). Amazon is quite effective at exposing customers to…
Buying Keyword Ads on People’s Names Doesn’t Violate Their Publicity Rights–Habush v. Cannon (Forbes Cross-Post)
By Eric Goldman Habush v. Cannon, 2013 WL 627251 (Wisc. App. Ct. Feb. 21, 2013) Can you imagine someone buying Google ($GOOG) AdWords keyword advertising triggered by your name? Most of us wouldn’t dream of it, usually because our names just…
Resetting One of the Longest Running Cyberbullying Cases–DC v. RR (Guest Blog Post)
By Guest Blogger Sruli Yellin [Eric’s introduction: In the course of blogging over the past 8+ years, I’ve read hundreds or even thousands of cases. This case ranks in my top 1% of most interesting and memorable cases. Today, we’d…
Building Owner Can’t Discover the Identity of Tenant Who Writes Bashing Yelp Review (Forbes Cross-Post)
By Eric Goldman Brompton Building, LLC v. Yelp!, Inc., 2013 IL App (1st) 120547-U (Ill. App. Ct. Jan. 31, 2013) Battles over online anonymity aren’t new, and we’ve made a lot of progress clarifying the legal rules. Usually, when a…
Before Graduated Response, There Was BSA’s “Define the Line” Program. What Happened to It? (Guest Blog Post)
By Guest Blogger Sruli Yellin [Eric’s introduction: with the imminent launch of the six strikes/graduated response program from the deceptively named Center for Copyright Information, I thought it might be worthwhile revisiting a prior effort by rightsowners to coopt Internet…
With Its Australian Court Victory, Google Moves Closer to Legitimizing Keyword Advertising Globally (Forbes Cross-Post)
By Eric Goldman Google’s ($GOOG) keyword advertising program, AdWords, has been subject to constant legal challenges for the past decade. After an initial period of legal uncertainty, AdWords’ legal fortunes recently have brightened in the United States and Europe. Earlier this…
Another Google AdWords Advertiser Avoids Trademark Liability–Whipple v. Brigman
By Eric Goldman Whipple v. Brigman, 2013 WL 566817 (W.D. N.C. Feb. 13, 2013) I’ve repeatedly said that trademark lawsuits over Google AdWords advertising rarely make financial sense. This case would clearly support that proposition, except both parties proceeded pro…
Revisiting the Ninth Circuit’s 1979 AMF v. Sleekcraft Case Post-Remand (Guest Blog Post)
By Guest Blogger Sruli Yellin [Eric’s note: like many IP professors, I’ve taught the 1979 9th Circuit ruling in AMF v. Sleekcraft for years. It’s the flagship Ninth Circuit opinion on the likelihood of consumer confusion factors, and it’s one…
Israeli Court Says Full-Text RSS Feeds Create an Implied Copyright License (Guest Blog Post)
By Guest Blogger Jonathan J. Klinger Aggregation of content through RSS feeds has been a big issue every since websites began to use RSS to distribute their content. See, e.g., Prof. Goldman’s discussion of the issue in 2005. Still, we…
Territorial Implications of Antigua’s Internet-Based IP Sanctions Against the US (Guest Blog Post)
By Guest Blogger Marketa Trimble At the end of January 2013, the WTO authorized Antigua to suspend its intellectual property obligations toward the United States in retaliation for the United States’ breach of WTO rules. There are at least three…