If Your Trademark Case Depends on Showing Initial Interest Confusion, Save Your Money–Select Comfort v. John Baxter
I’ve bashed the initial interest confusion doctrine for decades. It’s one of the worst doctrinal “innovations” in trademark law–ever. However, you might have noticed that I haven’t blogged many initial interest confusion cases recently. Why? Because the phrase rarely shows…
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…
Ninth Circuit Easily Dismisses YouTube Remove-and-Relocate Case–Darnaa v. Google
This is one of the many lawsuits against YouTube for removing videos and relocating them to a new URL, which resets the view count and breaks inbound links. This case, involving the “musician” Darnaa, generated a little buzz a couple…
Another Suspended Twitter User Loses in Court–Kimbrell v. Twitter
Just last month, I blogged about a suspended Twitter user who lost in court. This pro se lawsuit also fails. It makes me wonder: how many other suspended Twitter users have pending cases in court? This lawsuit is also one…
Another YouTube Remove-and-Relocate Case Fails–Kinney v. YouTube
This is one of numerous cases relating to YouTube’s crackdowns on videos allegedly promoted by bots. YouTube removed the videos from the promoted URLs and relocated them to new URLs, thus stripping the initial videos of the benefits of the…
FOSTA’s Political Curse
As you know, FOSTA was terrible policy. Since its passage, the law has been devastating to the communities of both sex trafficking victims and commercial sex workers. Law enforcement officers have stopped invested as much energy into sex trafficking operations…
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…
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…
Swedish Court Misunderstands Memes (Guest Blog Post)
by guest blogger Stacey Lantagne Memes are everywhere. Part of the essential communicative fabric of social media, it’s hard to imagine Twitter or Instagram or even texting without them. They get used to react to matters of national debate, sports…