Talk at Stanford on Online Trademark Law
I’m giving a talk at Stanford on Saturday about online trademark law. You can get a sneak preview of my outline. (This talk is largely cribbed from my Deregulating Relevancy paper).
German Meta-Search Engine May Be Liable for Defamation
Einstmann v. Sharelook Beteiligungen GmbH, LG Berlin, No. 27 O 45/05, 2/22/05. Sorry I’m a little late in picking this up, but a German court has held that a meta-search engine could be liable for defamation. According to the news…
Search Engines and Privacy
Wired runs an article on search engines using cookies to track searcher behavior. There is a certain “haven’t-we-heard-this-before” scaremongering in articles like this, especially the continued drumbeating against cookies and Gmail (which is a terrific service, BTW—best email account I’ve…
Webloyalty.com, Inc. v. Consumer Innovations LLC
Webloyalty.com, Inc. v. Consumer Innovations LLC, 73 U.S.P.Q. 2d 1898 (D. Del. Jan. 13, 2005). The parties compete in the online club membership business, selling packages of services that combine price discounts, insurance-esque protections and other low-value services that consumers…
The Portalization of Google
What’s left to complete the portalization of Google? It seems like in the past couple of months, they have significantly expanded the number of times I see Google-sourced content at the top of the search results list. Search for “Milwaukee…
An AFP Licensee Tells His Story of Being Kicked Out of Google News
I mentioned before that content licensors in practice cannot prevent licensees from indexing the content in search engines. There are two reasons why this is true. First, content licensees may depend on search engine traffic to pay the bills, and…
Who Gets Indexed in Google News?
I still have no idea how Google decides which news sources are among the 4,500 indexed in Google News. Google News’ FAQ has the following: “What if I don’t see my favorite news source in Google News? We’re as shocked…
AFP v. Google News Update
AP story recapping AFP v. Google, quoting Zittrain and von Lohmann (among others). Contrary to some popular press reports, it appears that AFP is pressing on with the lawsuit despite Google’s redoubled efforts to kick them out of Google News….
Initial Assessment of AFP v. Google
Lots of buzz about AFP’s lawsuit against Google for displaying AFP’s headlines and photos in Google News. Personally, I think Google News is great, and I use it often. However, we can’t let our love for Google blind us to…
Google/Viaticum, Luteciel
New ruling from the Versailles Court of Appeals in the Google/Viaticum, Luteciel case over Google France’s sale of the keywords “bourse de voyages”, “bourse de vols” and “bdv” to competitors. Once again, Google France loses. The French courts continue to…