Q1 2009 Quick Links, Part 4

By Eric Goldman Security * Massachusetts Data Security regulations were amended. * In Facebook v. Power.com, Facebook brought another lawsuit to block extraction of user data from the site (similar to the Facebook v. ConnectU lawsuit). Venkat, Masnick, News.com, NYT,…

Utah Trying to Regulate Keyword Advertising….Again!? Utah HB 450

By Eric Goldman When I first heard that the Utah legislature is considering yet another law to regulate keyword advertising, I thought: Are you kidding me? After all, Utah has pursued these regulations twice with disastrous results. The first time,…

Zango v. Kaspersky Ninth Circuit Oral Arguments

By Eric Goldman The Ninth Circuit has posted the audio of the February 2, 2009 oral arguments in Zango v. Kaspersky, the important 47 USC 230(c)(2) case about vendors’ abilities to classify third party content as spam, viruses, adware/spyware, etc….

2008 Cyberlaw Year-in-Review

By Eric Goldman It’s a sign of my schedule that I’m just now getting to this, and this post will be more pithy than I initially conceived. This post recaps some of the Cyberlaw highlights from last year. Frankly, the…

October 2008 Quick Links, Part 2

By Eric Goldman Spam * Kramer v. Perez. An Iowa court awards $236M in damages in a spam case. Venkat’s comments. * After the government lost its jury trial against Impulse Media, the court denied Impulse Media attorneys fees. Contracts…

September 2008 Quick Links, Part 3

By Eric Goldman eBay * Universal Grading Service v. eBay, Inc. More fallout from the National Numismatic v. eBay case–another lawsuit alleging antitrust and defamation because eBay designated some coin rating services as preferred and impliedly devalued others. * Windsor…

7Search Sues McAfee For Red Flagging It

By Eric Goldman 7Search.com v. McAfee, Inc., 1:2008cv04831 (N.D. Ill. complaint filed Aug. 25, 2008). The Justia page. I don’t have a good sense of how many lawsuits have been filed against anti-spyware vendors for classifying third party software as…

Competitive Pop-up Ads Aren’t Unfair Competition or Tortious Interference–Overstock v. SmartBargains

By Eric Goldman Overstock.com, Inc. v. SmartBargains, Inc., 2008 UT 55 (Utah Sup. Ct. Aug. 19, 2008) In light of the death of adware and the fact that almost all of us have moved on, it is jarring to see…

Affiliate Liability Extravaganza

By Eric Goldman [Note: I recently published a version of this article at InformIT. Here’s the pre-edited version I sent them.] Introduction This article discusses marketers’ liability for the actions of their marketing affiliates (what I refer to as “affiliate…

June 2008 Quick Links

By Eric Goldman Trademarks/Domain Names * Utah Lighthouse Ministry v. Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research, 2008 WL 22043807 (10th Cir. May 29, 2008). CMLP writeup. Nice 10th Circuit win for a gripe site against trademark infringement and cybersquatting. This…