No One Owns The Number ‘3.95%’ (We Think)–Banxcorp v. Costco (Forbes Cross-Post)
Banxcorp v. Costco Wholesale Corp., 09-CV-1783 (S.D.N.Y. Oct. 17, 2013). Who owns a single number, such as 3.95%? The question probably sounds crazy. Numbers are just facts, and the Supreme Court said in 1991 that facts aren’t copyrightable. So of…
Calling Out Scraper for “Stealing” Data Is Not Defamatory – Tamburo v. Dworkin
[Post by Venkat Balasubramani] Tamburo v. Dworkin, 04 C 3317 (N.D. Ill. Sept. 26, 2013) This is an interesting dispute that brings together several legal doctrines we love to cover here. It’s the type of fact pattern a law school…
2013 Internet Law Syllabus and Casebook Now Online
By Eric Goldman I have posted my 2013 Internet Law syllabus and updated and expanded casebook ($8 DRM-free PDF download). It’s hard to believe this is my 19th year teaching the course! (For more background on the course, see this…
Perfect 10 Can’t Sue Yandex for Out-of-Country Activity (Catch-up Post)
By Eric Goldman Perfect 10, Inc. v. Yandex N.V., 2013 WL 3668818 (N.D. Cal. July 12, 2013) This case has sat in my blog queue for a few weeks because I’m still not sure what to make of it. I…
The Latest Attempt to Use Copyright Law to Remove Negative Consumer Reviews–Small Justice v. Xcentric (Forbes Cross-Post)
By Eric Goldman [Note: as you know, I closed comments on this blog in 2006 because of a virulent comment spam attack. Sometimes I miss having comments, but then again, seeing the comments I got at Forbes in response to…
Multiple Listing Service Gets Favorable Appellate Ruling in Scraping Lawsuit
By Jake McGowan, with comments from Eric & Venkat Metropolitan Regional Information Systems, Inc. v. American Home Realty Network, Inc., 2013 WL 3722365 (4th Cir. July 17, 2013) This is a follow-up to our massive post on anti-scraping lawsuits in the…
Recap of Stanford E-Commerce Conference Panel on Takedown Notices
By Eric Goldman Last month, I attended Stanford Law School’s annual E-commerce Law Conference, one of my favorite conferences of the year because of its subject material and the chance to hang out with so many friends. This year, the…
Online Retailer Pays Minimum Damages When Taken Down Item Inadvertently Returns–Rosen v. Netfronts
By Jake McGowan Rosen v. Netfronts, CV 12-658 CAS (C.D. Cal. July 9, 2013) What happens when a website operator takes down a potentially copyright-infringing item, only to have it reappear through a technical mix-up? On July 9, a district…
Book Review: “Unfair to Genius: The Strange and Litigious Career of Ira B. Arnstein”
By Eric Goldman Ira Arnstein is well-known to most IP professors as the named plaintiff in the copyright classic Arnstein v. Porter from 1946 (also see this case archive). The Second Circuit’s opinion is a landmark ruling that appears in…
Catching Up on 512 Safe Harbor Cases (and Other Online Copyright Cases) From the Past Year
[Post by Venkat Balasubramani with a comment by Eric; followed by a massive supplement from Eric] [Eric’s intro: sometimes, a draft blog post misses the publication window and then comes out painfully late. Venkat drafted the first draft of this…