Ninth Circuit Groaner About Metatags–Art Attacks v. MGA

By Eric Goldman Art Attacks Ink LLC v. MGA Entertainment, Inc., CV-04-01035-RMB (9th Cir. Sept. 16, 2009) What is it about metatags that cause legal folks to believe they have magical search powers? It’s a meme that the legal community…

Sedgwick Claims Management v. Delsman Appealed to Ninth Circuit

By Eric Goldman Put this one in the “Are you kidding me?” file. Last month I blogged about Sedgwick Claims Management v. Delsman involving a small-time griper who had the temerity to cut-and-paste some company executive headshots to create his…

2009 Cyberspace Law Syllabus and Some Comments

By Eric Goldman I have posted my syllabus for this semester’s Cyberspace Law course. This blog post describes the changes from my 2008 course reader. For more on my pedagogical approaches to the course, see my Teaching Cyberlaw article. Trademark…

State of the Net West Recap

By Eric Goldman Yesterday, the High Tech Law Institute and the Advisory Committee to the Congressional Internet Caucus co-sponsored the Third Annual State of the Net West event at Santa Clara University. The featured participants were 3 members of Congress…

Biosafe-One v. Hawks Dismissed

By Eric Goldman Biosafe-One, Inc. v. Hawks, 2009 WL 2170150 (S.D.N.Y. July 25, 2009) I previously blogged about this case in 2007. The parties are competitors in the septic system cleaning products business. The plaintiff alleged that the defendant ripped…

Griping Blogger Gets Fair Use and Anti-SLAPP Win–Sedgwick v. Delsman

By Eric Goldman Sedgwick Claims Management Services, Inc. v. Delsman, 2009 WL 2157573 (N.D. Cal. July 17, 2009). The Justia page. Delsman had a big issue with Sedgwick. The details of his gripes aren’t all that important. To make his…

AP Gets It Right and Then Overreaches–AP v. AHN

Faced with an allegedly cut-and-dried case of someone systematically copying and reusing its news articles, the Associated Press brought what should have been an easy copyright suit. Unfortunately, it also tried to lever these sympathetic facts to stretch the scope…

Republishing Third Party Ratings in Marketing Material Might Be Copyright/Trademark Infringement–Health Grades v. Robert Wood Johnson Univ. Hospital

By Eric Goldman Health Grades, Inc. v. Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, Inc., 06-CV-02351-JLK (D. Colo. June 19, 2009) A Colorado judge has reached the remarkable conclusion that a hospital publicizing its star ratings and other recognition from a third…

Mixed Ruling on Damages in Premier League v. YouTube

By Eric Goldman The Football Association Premier League Ltd. v. YouTube, Inc., 07 Civ. 3592 (S.D.N.Y. July 3, 2009) This is a ruling about potential damages in one of the copyright infringement lawsuits against YouTube. It’s a pretty technical ruling…

June 2009 Quick Links, Part 1

By Eric Goldman Just a reminder that I post some items to Twitter that don’t make it into these monthly recaps. If you want even more, you can track a superset of my online activities at Friendfeed. Search Engines *…