Barrett on Internet Trademark Use
By Eric Goldman Margreth Barrett, a law professor at UC Hastings, has published Internet Trademark Suits and the Demise of “Trademark Use,” 39 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 371 (2006). The article makes a persuasive argument that the trademark use doctrine…
Perfect 10 Wins Injunction Against Google
By Eric Goldman Perfect 10 v. Google, Inc., CV 04-9484 AMH (C.D. Cal. Feb. 17, 2006) A major new ruling in the running battle over search engines and copyrights–this time concluding that Google’s creation and display of thumbnail images may…
Top Cyberspace IP Cases of 2005
By John Ottaviani (with help from Eric) Cyberspace continues to present fascinating and novel intellectual property issues. What follows is our attempt at identifying some of the more significant “Cyberspace Intellectual Property” decisions of 2005. Once again, it was quite…
Blog Defamation Lawsuit Lacks Jurisdiction–TrafficPower.com v. Seobook.com
By Eric Goldman Software Development and Investment of Nevada d/b/a Traffic-Power.com v. Wall d/b/a Seobook.com, No. 2:05-cv-01109-RLH-LRL (D. Nev. motion to dismiss granted Feb. 13, 2006) I generally avoid blogging about Internet jurisdiction cases. They tend to be fact-specific, and…
Yahoo Not Civilly Liable for User-Disseminated Child Porn–Doe v. Bates
By Eric Goldman Doe v. Bates, No. 5:05CV91 (E.D. Tex. Jan. 18, 2006) Introduction The facts of this case are virtually identical to the Doe v. AOL case from the late 1990s. In this case, Yahoo provided email and web…
Anti-Spyware Coalition Workshop Recap
By Eric Goldman I attended the Anti-Spyware Coalition Public Workshop last week in Washington DC. This was a well-attended event (my guess is that 300+ people attended), with a good mix of anti-spyware vendors, anti-spyware activists, adware vendors, policy wonks/politicos…
10th Circuit Recognizes Initial Interest Confusion Doctrine–Australian Gold v. Hatfield
By Eric Goldman Australian Gold, Inc. v. Hatfield, 2005 WL 3739862 (10th Cir. Feb. 7, 2006) Following on a regressive initial interest confusion/metatags case from January, last week the 10th Circuit found initial interest confusion based on metatag usage and…
Craigslist Sued for Fair Housing Act Violation–Chicago Lawyers Committee v. Craigslist
By Eric Goldman Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Inc. v. Craigslist, Inc., Case No. 06C-0657 (N.D. Ill. complaint filed Feb. 3, 2006) Craigslist, the free online classified site, has been sued by a group of lawyers for…
Operation Site Down Fallout–19 RISCISO Participants Indicted for Warez Trading
By Eric Goldman I previously blogged on Operation Site Down, one of the largest warez busts ever. In “Operation Jolly Roger,” a component of the larger Operation Site Down, a cooperating witness gave the FBI access to the RISCISO warez…
Metatags as Per Se Trademark Infringement–Tdata v. Aircraft Technical Publishers
By Eric Goldman Good grief. Lawsuits over metatag usage are so 1999. Yet, we continue to get a steady stream of cases that treat inclusion of a competitor’s trademark in a metatag as a per se trademark infringement. I’ve explained…