Catching Up on FOSTA Since Its Enactment (A Linkwrap)
Some links of note about what’s happened since the enactment of the Worst of Both Worlds FOSTA: * ReplyAll podcast on the Worst of Both Worlds FOSTA’s harmful effects on sex workers. One sex worker reports she knows of 13…
Lawsuit Over Cancer-Curing Honey Ads Still Sucks–Abid v. Google
Abid markets cancer-curing honey. He bought AdWords to promote his MightyHoney website. Google rejected the ads. He sued Google pro se for a variety of claims. The court previously granted Google’s motion to dismiss with leave to amend. My prior…
TWiT’s Trademark Lawsuit Against Twitter Sent Back to the Drawing Board
The popular and long-running show “This Week in Tech,” commonly called TWiT, sued Twitter. TWiT provides audio and video content branded under the TWiT trademark. It alleges that Twitter’s offering of video services and content under the TWITTER brand infringes…
YouTube Defeats Another Remove-and-Relocate Lawsuit–Song Fi v. Google
The YouTube “remove-and-relocate” cases involve similar facts. A YouTuber uploaded a video and promoted it. YouTube suspected irregularities with the promotion, removed the video from its initial URL (breaking inbound links, stripping the comments, and resetting the like and view…
The Ninth Circuit STILL Thinks Keyword Metatags Matter in 2018–Adidas v. Skechers
Yesterday, the Ninth Circuit ruled about trademarked stripes on tennis shoes. To me, legally weaponizing dots in three lines on a shoe predictably leads to wasteful and possibly anti-consumer litigation. However, instead of critiquing the opinion generally, I’ll isolate just…
Another Court Says Competitive Keyword Advertising Doesn’t Cause Confusion
This is a lawsuit between two Alzheimer’s-related non-profit organizations, the Alzheimer’s Association (the more established and better-funded group) and the Alzheimer’s Foundation (the relative upstart). I blogged a prior 2015 ruling. The potential for brand collisions in consumers’ minds seems…
Competitive Keyword Advertising Doesn’t Show Bad Intent–ONEpul v. BagSpot
This case involves dispensers of plastic bags for picking up dogshit. The plaintiff has a registered trademark in the brand “ONEpul.” The defendant describes its bags as “one-pull” (and yet, the term “descriptive fair use” doesn’t appear in the opinion…
Google Successfully Amends Adwords Contract to Add Arbitration–AdTrader v. Google
Some advertisers sued Google over promised refunds for alleged click fraud. Google’s 2013 Adwords contract said: Google may add to, delete from or modify these Terms at any time without liability. The modified Terms will be posted at www.google.com/ads/terms. Customer…
More Aftermath from the ‘Worst of Both Worlds FOSTA’
In my prior post on the Worst of Both Worlds FOSTA, I enumerated three problematic developments that occurred before the bill was signed: * the federal government shut down Backpage without relying on FOSTA’s new provisions. * two different civil…
Google Can Reject Ads Promoting Honey That Claims to Cure Cancer–Abid v. Google
Plaintiff Abid claims he has developed “a systems biology empirical approach based on prophetic medicine.” He created a website, Mighty Honey, that provides information about “prophetic medicine”/”Arabic herbal medicine” which appears to be supplement-infused honey (the screenshot to the right…