Federal Court Authorizes Service of Process via Twitter
Federal courts have long authorized service via email under Rule 4(f) for foreign defendants. The rule says that an individual in a foreign country can be served by (1) internationally agreed upon means such as the Hague Convention; (2) if…
Trade Secret Owner Penalized For ‘Specious’ Misappropriation Lawsuit–BTS v. Exclusive Perspectives
As you know, I’ve expressed many concerns about the new ex parte seizure provisions in the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA). To support the ex parte seizure provision, DTSA proponents sometimes argued that legitimate trade secret owners and their lawyers…
Judge Scolds Litigant For Making Facebook Account “Private” During Litigation–Thurmond v. Bowman
This is a social media evidence ruling. Plaintiff filed a Fair Housing Act lawsuit alleging that a prospective landlord decline to rent an apartment after learning that two of plaintiff’s children would be living with her. The lease denial allegedly…
Evidentiary Failings Undermine Arbitration Clauses in Online Terms
Earlier this week, we posted about a Seventh Circuit case where an ambiguous user call-to-action undermined an online contract formation procecss. (See “Defective Call-to-Action Dooms Online Contract Formation–Sgouros v. TransUnion“.) Recently, a couple of trial courts issued rulings denying companies’…
Posting Vacation Photos To Facebook Costs An Employee His Job–Jones v. Accentia (Forbes Cross-Post)
[Note: inexplicably, over at Forbes, this became my most-read blog post ever, with about a quarter-million views–even though it’s a short, breezy and quickly written post that I posted during the dead time of Sunday mid-morning.] Before the Internet, people…
Oculus Faces Messy Ownership Claims Over Its Head Mounted Display–Total Recall v. Luckey
Palmer Luckey, who ultimately developed the much-hyped Oculus Rift, entered into an agreement with a company called “Total Recall”. Although it was not crystal clear, the agreement was technically with Thomas Seidl, one of the partners of Total Recall. The…
2H 2015 Quick Links, Part 6 (Social Media)
* Burge ex rel. Burge v. Colton School Dist. 53, 2015 WL 1757161 (D. Or. April 17, 2015). 8th grader gets a C in a class and gets grounded. He vents about the teacher on Facebook: Braeden initially posted that…
Judge Expresses Frustration With Overbroad Discovery Requests for Social Media Evidence–Farley v. Callais
As we’ve discussed before, social media accounts are honeypots in litigation; they are irresistible data sources as an encapsulation of a person’s life. As a result, it’s become routine for litigators to seek massive amounts of social media evidence in…
Court Allows Facebook Expert to Testify in Threat Case–U.S. v. Bradbury
I previously blogged about US v. Bradbury, a prosecution for Facebooking allegedly jocular threats to blow up buildings and kill government officials. (See: “When Can Defendants Defeat A Criminal Threat Prosecution By Claiming They Were Joking? Not Often”.) Bradbury was…
Confusion From Competitive Keyword Advertising? Fuhgeddaboudit
[Note: I wrote this post over the weekend, before the atrocious MTM v. Amazon case. I think virtually all of this post remains current despite that ruling. I’ll blog the MTM case separately.] I’ve been chronicling the futility of competitive…