Venkat’s Blog Post Unjustly Removed from Google Search Results Due to EU RTBF Takedown
This is not the first time my blog has been subject to right-to-be-forgotten (RTBF) takedowns. See, e.g., this post (scroll down for the updates). But every time the RTBF is applied to my blog, it’s probably a wrongful application of…
Quick Debrief on the Gonzalez v. Google Oral Arguments
I’m going to crank this blog post out before I get swamped with press requests. My takeaways: I did not hear 5 votes in favor of the plaintiffs’ position. Indeed, the justices didn’t really engage with the plaintiffs’ core arguments…
9th Circuit Unceremoniously Dismisses Antitrust Lawsuit Against Google–Dreamstime v. Google
I previously summarized this case: Dreamstime sells stock photos. It had favorable organic indexing that made it some money, and it bought Adwords advertising that made it more money. Dreamstime was a big enough player that it got personal support…
Yet More Evidence That Keyword Advertising Lawsuits Are Stupid–Porta-Fab v. Allied Modular
Porta-Fab and Allied Modular compete in the modular building space, which has an average sales price of $32k. Allied purchased “PortaFab” as a broad match for keyword ads, showing ads like this (highlighting added): As you can see, Allied’s ad…
Another Tough People Search Ruling–Spindler v. Seamless
Seamless offers a customer lead tool that displays the prospect’s personal information behind a subscription paywall with try-before-you-buy options. The plaintiff sued Seamless for violations of California’s publicity rights statute and related claims. The court denies Seamless’ motion to dismiss….
Griper’s Keyword Ads May Constitute False Advertising (Huh?)–LoanStreet v. Troia
Troia was a LoanStreet employee. He was allegedly fired for cause. Troia posted disparaging comments about LoanStreet at Glassdoor.com, Reddit.com, and Teamblind.com. He then worked to boost the posts’ visibility, including: the posts asked users to “follow [his] link and…
1-800 Contacts Loses YET ANOTHER Trademark Lawsuit Over Competitive Keyword Ads–1-800 Contacts v. Warby Parker
1-800 Contacts first appeared on this blog on February 9, 2005, my second day of blogging. 17 years later, I’m still blogging their ignoble trademark lawsuits. 🤡 Some “highlights” of 1-800 Contacts’ trademark jurisprudence over the years: 1-800 Contacts v….
Quick Links from the Past Year, Part 3 (Trademarks)
Initial Interest Confusion It’s 2022 and we’re still dealing with this shit. SMH. Can we please just outright kill the doctrine and spend our time on more meaningful problems? * “the initial interest confusion doctrine…requires a finding of likelihood of…
Is Google’s Search Engine a “Common Carrier”? (Seriously???)–Ohio ex rel Yost v. Google
This is a crazy case. Ohio AG Yost claims that Google’s search engine is a common carrier and a public utility. Nominally, his goal is to redress Google self-preferencing, but that’s a transparently pretextual excuse to censor search results and…
Court Dismisses Trademark Claims Over Internal Search Results–Las Vegas Skydiving v. Groupon
Las Vegas Skydiving Adventures offers tandem skydiving under the “Fyrosity” brand. It has never offered its services through Groupon. A search for “skydive Fyrosity” at Groupon says “No matching deals. You may also like ….” and produces search results for…