Yellow Pages Companies Challenge Seattle Opt-out Ordinance on First Amendment Grounds
[Post by Venkat Balasubramani] Dex Media West, Inc., et al. v. City of Seattle, et al., Case No. 10-cv-01857 (W.D. Wash. complaint filed Nov. 15, 2010) In what many will probably characterize as a dinosaur’s last gasp litigation strike, two…
Free-to-Consumers Ad-Supported Website Isn’t Illegally Priced–Cammarata v. Bright Imperial
By Eric Goldman Cammarata v. Bright Imperial Ltd., 2011 WL 227943 (Cal. App. Ct. Jan. 26, 2011). The complaint. The trial court ruling. If you can’t compete with free, can you litigate it away? Kevin Cammarata ran subscription-based porn sites…
Class Action Brought by “Lonely and Vulnerable” Men Against Online Cupid Site Moves Forward — Badella v. Deniro Mktg.
[Post by Venkat Balasubramani with some comments by Eric] Badella v. Deniro Marketing LLC, 10-03908 CRB (N.D. Cal.; Jan 24, 2011) This is a good one. A group of plaintiffs brought a putative class action against an online dating website…
CA Appeals Court: Claims Under State Spam Statute Not Preempted by CAN-SPAM – Hypertouch v. Valueclick
[Post by Venkat Balasubramani with some comments from Eric] Hypertouch, Inc. v. Valueclick, Inc., et al., B218603 (Cal. Ct. App.; Jan. 18, 2011) A California appeals court weighed in on a long-running debate: whether CAN-SPAM preempts California’s spam statute. This…
Keyword Advertiser Headed to Trial–Soaring Helmet v. Nanal
By Eric Goldman Soaring Helmet Corp. v. Nanal, Inc., 2011 WL 39058 (W.D. Wash. Jan. 3, 2011) I previously blogged on this case in 2009 when Soaring Helmet sued Google for selling keyword advertising triggered on its trademark. Soaring Helmet…
Iconic TV Commercials
By Eric Goldman I’m teaching Advertising & Marketing Law this semester, and I thought it might be helpful to start the semester by showing some TV ads. Remember that many of my students were born after the golden age of…
Nov.-Dec. 2010 Quick Links, Part 5
By Eric Goldman Taxes * Amazon.com, LLC v New York State Dept. of Taxation & Fin., 2010 NY Slip Op 07823 (N.Y. App. Div. Nov. 4, 2010). A NY appellate court rejected Overstock’s/Amazon’s facial challenges to “affiliates tax” but revived…
Google Files Unredacted Brief in Rosetta Stone v. Google Appeal
By Eric Goldman After some prodding by Paul Levy of Public Citizen, Google has filed an unredacted version of its response brief in the Rosetta Stone v. Google appeal. As Paul explains in his blog post, the newly disclosed information…
Nov.-Dec. 2010 Quick Links, Part 1 (Trademarks and Advertising Edition)
By Eric Goldman I have a big backlog of Quick Links from the last 2 months. I’ll post them over the next few days. I also have a backlog of other blog posts I need to write, especially my reassessment…
Hotels Benefit When Distributors Reference the Hotel’s Trademark in Keyword Ad Copy
By Eric Goldman Lesley Chiou of Occidental College and Catherine Tucker of MIT have posted an empirical study, How Does the Use of Trademarks by Third-Party Sellers Affect Online Search? The study tries to model what happens when distributors use…