The Most Effective Anti-Terrorism Law EVER

By Eric Goldman I really don’t understand the way legislators think. The latest example of proposed laws that make me wonder “is that really necessary?”: NY A5026/S631 (search here; apparently this law was also introduced in 2006 but died in…

January 2007 Quick Links

By Eric Goldman * Marketers (including Microsoft) are paying authors to write Wikipedia entries. Surprised?! * Also on the topic of Wikipedia and marketers, Wikipedia has tagged all of their pages NOFOLLOW so that there’s no way a marketer or…

December 2006 Quick Links

By Eric Goldman * JP Enterprises, Inc. v. HDVE, LLC, 1:06-cv-01046-REB-PAC (D. Colo.). In June 2006, JP Enterprises sued Yahoo for selling its trademarks for keyword-triggered ads. In December, JP Enterprises and Yahoo stipulated a dismissal of the case against…

Kremen Loses Challenge to ARIN’s IP Address Allocation Policies–Kremen v. ARIN

By Eric Goldman Kremen v. American Registry For Internet Numbers, Ltd., No. C 06-02554 JW (N.D. Cal. Dec. 20, 2006) In a previous post about the Sex.com saga, I mentioned that Kremen had sued ARIN for its refusal to transfer…

Sex.com — An Update

By Eric Goldman Judge Alex Kozinski recently guest lectured in my Cyberspace Law course, which prompted me to reread Kozinski’s opinion in the Kremen v. Cohen Sex.com case. Because that opinion came out in 2003, it made me curious–what’s happened…

Adware, Spam and Some of My Other Favorite Topics

By Eric Goldman There has been a flurry of interesting legal developments in the last few days: * The plaintiffs voluntarily and unilaterally dismissed (with prejudice) Simios v. 180solutions, one of several putative class actions against adware vendors. See the…

Trademark Travesty of the Month–SMJ Group v. 417 Lafayette Restaurant

By Eric Goldman SMJ Group, Inc. v. 417 Lafayette Restaurant LLC, 2006 WL 1881768 (S.D.N.Y July 6, 2006) I’ve read so many horrible trademark decisions that I barely notice the garden-variety judicial screw-up. But this case is so exceptional and…

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…

Barrett on Internet Trademark Use

By Eric Goldman Margreth Barrett, a law professor at UC Hastings, has published Internet Trademark Suits and the Demise of “Trademark Use,” 39 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 371 (2006). The article makes a persuasive argument that the trademark use doctrine…

Top Cyberspace IP Cases of 2005

By John Ottaviani (with help from Eric) Cyberspace continues to present fascinating and novel intellectual property issues. What follows is our attempt at identifying some of the more significant “Cyberspace Intellectual Property” decisions of 2005. Once again, it was quite…