Student Sues Term Paper Website (and its Host)
Macellari v. Carroll, no. 4:05-CV-04161-JPG (S.D. Ill. complaint filed Aug. 31, 2005). Blue Macellari, a student at Duke and Johns Hopkins, has sued a term paper vendor (Rusty Carroll/R2C2, Inc.) operating three websites (doingmyhomework.com, freeforessays.com and freefortermpapers.com) for copyright infringement,…
Downloading Software onto Home Computer May Be Trespass to Chattels–Sotelo v. DirectRevenue
Sotelo v. DirectRevenue LLC, No. 05 C 2562 (N.D. Ill. Aug. 29, 2005). It was pretty obvious when the complaint was filed in March that this lawsuit warranted careful scrutiny. This initial ruling reinforces that point. This ruling is interesting…
2004 Case on Advertiser Liability for Spam
Fenn v. Redmond Venture, Inc., 2004 UT App 355 (Utah Ct. App. Oct. 15, 2004). I was digging through my stack and stumbled across this case from last year. It seems apropos to a running theme on this blog about…
Algorithm for Analyzing Liability for Contributing to Copyright Infringement
By John Ottaviani Professor David Post has an interesting article (free subscription required) in the August 3, 2005 issue of the National Law Journal, in which he reviews the “Sony doctrine” of secondary liability for copyright infringement. In Sony, the…
GEICO v. Google Opinion (Finally) Issued
Government Employees Insurance Co. v. Google, Inc., No. 1:04cv507 (E.D. Va. Aug. 8, 2005). Overview On December 15, 2004, Judge Brinkema made an oral ruling in this case and promised to produce a written opinion in “a brief amount of…
Search Tidbits from ABA Annual Meeting
At the ABA Annual Meeting, I was on a panel with Rose Hagan of Google and Allison McDade of Dell. A couple of tidbits from the presentations that caught my attention: 1) Rose said that Google has now been sued…
Implications of Grokster Presentation
By John Ottaviani Here are the slides from a presentation I gave Saturday on the “Implications of Grokster” at the American Bar Association meeting in Chicago. The more interesting part of the presentation is toward the end, discussing “what we…
Are Adware Advertisers Responsible for Adware?
The topic of “who is responsible for what?” in the adware industry keeps coming up. I’ve repeatedly blogged on this topic in somewhat piecemeal fashion, but I finally organized my thoughts into an editorial that ran this morning in News.com….
New Case Law Lists
Sorry for the catch-all posting, but I have uploaded several new resources to my website: A list of online contracts cases (emphasizing, in particular, online contract formation). A list of online service provider liability cases (copyright, trademark, 47 USC 230)….
Milwaukee Radio Station Settles 47 USC 230 Lawsuit
The Journal-Sentinel reports today that WTMJ-AM settled a libel lawsuit that appeared to be directly covered by 47 USC 230. A talk radio host, Charlie Sykes, received an email from a listener and then reposted the letter on his blog….