Alaska’s Anti-Adware Law–A One-Year Status Report
By Eric Goldman A year ago today, Alaska enacted the most expansive anti-adware law to date. This post gives a quick status report on the law. So, what’s happened in the past year? As far as I can tell, nothing….
Brand Spillovers Talk
By Eric Goldman Yesterday, at the IP Scholars Conference at Boalt, I presented my paper currently titled “Brand Spillovers.” This is the evolution of my project from last year I was calling Trademark Adjacency. I’m still trying to think through…
Merriam-Webster Defines “Spyware”
By Eric Goldman A lot of attention has been directed to Merriam-Webster’s addition of Google to its dictionary–as a verb, no less. I’m sure the Google trademark department isn’t thrilled about the genericide implications of this. Meanwhile, this announcement overshadowed…
CDT Report on Spyware Enforcement Actions
By Eric Goldman The Center for Democracy & Technology has provided a public service by releasing its report, “Spyware Enforcement.” The report describes, in table format, various federal and state enforcement actions against spyware purveyors. The report summarizes the action:…
June 2006 Quick Links
By Eric Goldman I have had virtually no Internet access over the past 10 days due to my move and travels, so my Bloglines account was bulging with more than 1700 articles. Here’s a quick look at some of the…
Merck v. Mediplan Redux–Keyword Purchases Really Aren’t Trademark Use
By Eric Goldman Merck & Co. v. Mediplan Health Consulting, Inc., 2006 WL 1418616 (SDNY motion for reconsideration denied May 24, 2006) In late March, the legality of the search engine keyword advertising industry got very murky due to two…
Quick Links May 2006
By Eric Goldman My blogging queue has gotten too thick. Here’s some items that caught my attention that I’ve been meaning to blog and simply haven’t gotten to. * I previously blogged about Chris Wilson, the website operator who allowed…
Ebates Sued for Trespass to Chattels–Sotelo v. Ebates
By Eric Goldman Sotelo v. Ebates Shopping.com, No. 06C-2531 (N.D. Ill. complaint filed May 5, 2006) The Collins Law Firm has filed a third class action lawsuit over adware, this time targeting Ebate’s Moe Money Maker client software. The complaint…
Yahoo “Syndication Fraud” Lawsuits–Crafts by Veronica v. Yahoo and Draucker Development v. Yahoo
By Eric Goldman Crafts by Veronica v. Yahoo, Inc., No. 2:06-cv-01985-JCL-MF (D. N.J. complaint filed May 1, 2006) Draucker Development v. Yahoo, Inc., No. CV06-2737 (C.D. Cal. complaint filed May 4, 2006) Two companion lawsuits against Yahoo for what the…
Winn on Adware Contracts
By Eric Goldman The Berkeley Technology Law Journal has published Jane K. Winn, Contracting Spyware by Contract, 20 Berkeley Tech. L.J. 1345 (2005), a follow-up to her presentation at the Boalt Spyware Conference in April 2005. Jane details the phenomenon…