Restricting Competitive Keyword Ads Is Anti-Competitive–FTC v. 1-800 Contacts
Starting in 2002 and continuing for about a decade, 1-800 Contacts systematically locked up many of its online contact lenses retail competitors into settlement agreements that prohibited the parties from bidding on each other’s trademarks at the search engines. Perhaps…
Gambling App Fails to Create Binding Terms of Service–Wilson v. Huuuge
I’ve blogged about the Big Fish gambling case before Judge Leighton. He declined to order arbitration in that case, finding that Big Fish waived its right to arbitrate by extensively litigating the case. Judge Leighton is hearing some other similar…
Angie’s List Defeats Lawsuit Over Alleged “Pay-to-Play” Rankings–Strauss v. Angie’s List
Strauss spent over $200,000 on Angie’s List advertising over about a decade. After he stopped advertising, he claimed Angie’s List treated him poorly, including deindexing him from its search, then degrading his positioning in search results, and other malfeasance. All…
Defendant Can’t Send Virtual Gambling Claims to Arbitration
Churchill Downs’ Big Fish Casino is accused of violating Washington’s gambling statute. It moved to dismiss and was successful in district court. On appeal, the Ninth Circuit said that the Big Fish casino may violate Washington’s anti-gambling statute. (Previous blog…
Racial Discrimination Lawsuit Against Airbnb Has the Potential to Change Online Marketplaces–Harrington v. Airbnb
Airbnb has admitted that some of its vendors have engaged in racial discrimination. It really had no choice in this admission, after both empirical and anecdotal evidence demonstrated it. Plaintiffs sued Airbnb for violating Oregon’s discrimination law. The magistrate judge…
Video Advertising Contract Descends Into Possible “Cyberattack”–Radian Weapons v. GY6Vids
This is a lawsuit between Radian Weapons and GY6Vids, a company that Radian hired to promote Radian’s products on YouTube. (GY’s YouTube channel currently has almost seven hundred thousand subscribers. Press coverage of the lawsuit from The Bulletin here.) The…
Ninth Circuit Interprets Autodialer Broadly For TCPA Purposes
Marks signed up for a gym membership with Crunch Fitness. He received three text messages. He sued on behalf of a putative class. The key question is whether the messages were sent using an “automatic telephone dialing system” (ATDS) under…
Google Successfully Amends Its AdWords TOS to Add Arbitration Clause–Trudeau v. Google
Some AdWords advertisers are suing Google for allegedly misimplementing negative keywords. Google seeks to move the dispute to arbitration. In 2013, Google’s AdWords TOS said: 11 Term. Google may add to, delete from or modify these Terms at any time…
California Amends the Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA); Fixes About 0.01% of its Problems
Recently, Gov. Brown signed SB 1121, the first of possibly several amendments designed to fix and rehabilitate the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). Here is the complete statute as revised. I prepared a redline showing the amendments. The amendments make…
Q2 2018 Quick Links, Part 5 (Potpourri)
My email inbox has gotten out of control, and I had to declare partial email bankruptcy. In this post, I’m largely quoting highlights from 18 cases I had flagged for closer review or possible posting over the past 18 months…