Patent Policy in the Supreme Court and Congress–October 27, 2006
By Eric Goldman The High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University School of Law is co-sponsoring, with the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology, a conference on Patent Policy in the Supreme Court and Congress. This event will bring…
Consumer Reviews May Lift E-Commerce Conversion
By Eric Goldman Judith Chevalier & Dina Mayzlin, The Effect of Word of Mouth on Sales: Online Book Reviews, Journal of Marketing Research, August 2006. [see a free earlier version from 2003] For a while, Epinions got into the “syndication”…
Acxiom Not Liable for Security Breach–Bell v. Acxiom
By Eric Goldman Bell v. Acxiom Corp., 4:06CV00485-WRW (E.D. Ark. Oct. 3, 2006) Acxiom is a major data miner/data broker. As a result, they have lots of sensitive personal data stored on their computers. Between 2001-2003, they suffered a major…
Google AdWords Contract Upheld–Person v. Google
By Eric Goldman Person v. Google Inc., 2006 WL 2884444 (S.D.N.Y. Oct. 11, 2006) Carl Person is a candidate for New York’s Attorney General and an AdWords advertiser. He complains about a variety of Google’s AdWords’ policies, including its minimum…
One Judge’s Derisive View of Junk Faxes as Conversion
By Eric Goldman Rossario’s Fine Jewelry, Inc. v. Paddock Publications, Inc., 443 F. Supp. 2d 976 (N.D. Ill. Aug. 17, 2006). I’ve blogged before on courts’ rejection of a common law conversion claim based on the receipt of junk faxes….
Google Wins Lawsuit Over Search Results–Maughan v. Google
By Eric Goldman Maughan v. Google Technology, Inc., 2006 WL 2874791 (Cal. App. Ct. Oct 11, 2006) In 2004, Mark Maughan sued Google over the way that Google crafts the site description part of its search results. As the minority…
Article on Regulating Marketing–A Coasean Analysis of Marketing
By Eric Goldman Eric Goldman, A Coasean Analysis of Marketing, 2006 Wis. L. Rev. __ (forthcoming). In 2001, I had a career-altering epiphany while I was working at Epinions (this is the topic that prompted me to consider becoming a…
Trademark Dilution Revision Act of 2006
By Eric Goldman Last week, President Bush signed the Trademark Dilution Revision Act of 2006 into law. Ostensibly, this law was intended to overturn the Moseley case’s requirement that plaintiffs show “actual dilution” instead of a “likelihood of dilution.” However,…
Must Websites Comply with the ADA (and State-Law Equivalents)? National Federation of the Blind v. Target
By Eric Goldman National Federation of the Blind v. Target Corp., No. C 06-01801 (N.D. Cal. Sept. 6, 2006) This case got a fair amount of attention when it first came out, so I’m a little late to this party….
Online Word of Mouth Presentation
By Eric Goldman Today I was in Pittsburgh presenting a work-in-progress talk called “Online Word of Mouth and Its Implications for Trademark Law.” My slides. Frank Pasquale’s and Rebecca Tushnet’s comments on the presentation.