Righthaven Hit With Another Fee/Cost Award, This Time Nearly $120k–Righthaven v. DiBiase
By Eric Goldman Righthaven LLC v. DiBiase, 2011 WL 5101938 (D. Nev. Oct. 26, 2011) There’s really not much to say about this one. In a brief opinion that speaks for itself, Judge Hunt awarded nearly $120,000 in attorneys’ fees…
Yelp Gets Complete Win in Advertiser “Extortion” Case–Levitt v. Yelp
By Eric Goldman Levitt v. Yelp Inc., 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 124082 (N.D Cal. Oct. 26, 2011) A group of advertisers sued Yelp for allegedly extorting them to buy ads from Yelp with the implied/express threat that Yelp would degrade…
Did California Unintentionally (?) Impose New Statutory Duties on Every Blogger? A Post on the Newly Enacted California Reader Privacy Act
By Eric Goldman California recently enacted the Reader Privacy Act, SB 602. See the EFF announcement. This new California law seeks to protect online book reader privacy to the same extent reader privacy is protected by libraries, by requiring heightened…
Keyword Metatags are Back…Will Judicial Freakouts Continue?
By Eric Goldman Keyword metatags are back, and I couldn’t be less thrilled. Few Internet technologies have so thoroughly baffled judges as keyword metatags. From a technologists’ perspective, keyword metatags were a 1990s experiment by public search engines at improving…
Q3 2011 Quick Links, Part 5
By Eric Goldman See the other quick links posts in this series: * Q3 2011 Quick Links, Part 4 * Q3 2011 Quick Links, Part 3 * Q3 2011 Quick Links, Part 2 (Trademarks/Domain Names Edition) * Q3 2011 Quick…
Q3 2011 Quick Links, Part 4
By Eric Goldman Content Regulation * Lawmakers are putting the squeeze on advertisers to be content police. Meanwhile, VeriSign begged for the right to act as content police before changing its mind. * Kowalski v. Koster, 2011 WL 4349365 (W.D….
Q3 2011 Quick Links, Part 3
By Eric Goldman Advertising Search Marketing * Search Engine Land: “In many cases, it is worth buying keywords even if you rank organically for them.” Similarly, a Google study indicates that PPC advertising lifts clicks on organic results. Prior blog…
Google Defeats Class Certification in Keyword Ad Lawsuit–FPX v. Google
By Eric Goldman FPX, LLC v. Google, Inc., 2011 WL 4783376 (E.D. Tex. Sept. 29, 2011) Google obtained a major victory in one of the most serious pending lawsuits against it challenging its AdWords keyword advertising program. Putative class action…
Q3 2011 Quick Links, Part 2 (Trademarks/Domain Names Edition)
By Eric Goldman * In the Betty Boop case (Fleischer Studios v. AVELA), the Ninth Circuit stepped back from some of its perplexing language about aesthetic functionality and the Dastar opinion, but the revised opinion remains confusing. Rebecca’s coverage. *…
Recommended Books on Business Decision-Making Using Intellectual Property?
By Eric Goldman I posted the following to the IPProfs email list: I teach the IP Survey course principally as a business law course, i.e., companies are trying to make business decisions, and IP doctrines can help (or hinder) those…