Search Engine Advertiser Litigation Updates
By Eric Goldman Recently, there were intermediate rulings in two long-standing cases by search engine advertisers against search engines. CLRB Hanson Industries, LLC v. Google Inc., 2008 WL 2079200 (N.D. Cal. May 14, 2008) This lawsuit involves the Google AdWords…
April 2008 Quick Links
By Eric Goldman Anti-Gaming * Even though Ticketmaster won its lawsuit, Minnesota overreacted to the Hannah Montana ticket crush by banning software to circumvent an online ticket allocation process. See Sec. 609.806. Check out the hyperbole in this press release!…
Injunction Requires Negative Keywords in Future Adwords Campaigns
By Eric Goldman Orion Bancorp Inc. v. Orion Residential Finance LLC, 2008 WL 816794 (M.D. Fla. March 25, 2008). It looks like courts/lawyers are finally getting savvier about broad matching (see my previous blogging on the legal understanding of broad…
Court Says Keyword Metatags Don’t Matter–Standard Process v. Banks
By Eric Goldman Standard Process, Inc. v. Banks, 2008 WL 1805374 (E.D. Wis. April 18, 2008) SEOs and SEMs have known for years that most search engines ignore or give minimal acknowledgement to keyword metatags. Lawyers, on the other hand,…
March 2008 Quick Links, Part I
By Eric Goldman It’s a sign of my busy March/April that I am just now posting these… Reputation/47 USC 230 * I have a lot to say about the JuicyCampus story (AP, MSNBC, Chronicle of Higher Education). Unfortunately, I ran…
11th Circuit Freaks Out About Metatags–North American Medical v. Axiom
By Eric Goldman North American Medical Corp. v. Axiom Worldwide, Inc., 2008 WL 918411 (11th Cir. April 7, 2008) Oh man, what a bizarre and frustrating ruling from the 11th Circuit on metatags. The parties compete in the “spinal decompression”…
Rescuecom v. Google Second Circuit Oral Arguments
By Eric Goldman Yesterday the Second Circuit heard oral arguments in Rescuecom v. Google, and reports from the oral arguments are trickling out. James Grimmelmann provides a comprehensive report. Many thanks to James for taking the time to write this…
Rescuecom v. Google Pre-Oral Argument Details
By Eric Goldman We’re anxiously awaiting oral arguments in the Rescuecom v. Google case next week. In advance of that, the court cleaned up a couple of matters: 1) The court denied the amicus brief from Yahoo, AOL and eBay….
Google Site-Specific Search-Within-Search Tool–Why is Everyone So Worked Up About This?
By Eric Goldman On Monday, Bob Tedeschi at the NYT published an article entitled “A New Tool From Google Alarms Sites” about Google’s recently launched site-specific search-within-search box. When I first saw the feature, I really didn’t think about it…
Adwords Ad Creates Initial Interest Confusion–Storus v. Aroa
By Eric Goldman Storus Corp. v. Aroa Marketing Inc., 2008 WL 449835 (N.D. Cal. Feb. 15, 2008). (Sorry for my delay blogging this one). A federal district court has held that displaying a competitor’s trademark in Adwords ad copy constitutes…