Plaintiffs’ Law Firm Can Reference Targeted Business’ Name In Ad Copy–McHugh Fuller v. Pruitt
PruittHealth operates nursing homes in the Southeast. The McHugh Fuller law firm regularly sues nursing homes (their tagline: “Nursing Home Law…It’s What We Do”). To drum up business, in March 2015, it ran the following ad in the Moultrie, Georgia…
Court Rejects Effort to De-Index Search Results–Manchanda v. Google
Rahul Manchanda, an attorney, claims he was defamed in Ripoff Reports and elsewhere. In 2013, he obtained a restraining order against some of the authors in New York state court. Manchanda then sought to expand that order to restrain Ripoff…
Google Loses Two Section 230(c)(2) Rulings–Spy Phone v. Google and Darnaa v. Google
Section 230(c)(2) doesn’t get a lot of love from practitioners or academics because it doesn’t get a lot of love in court. At the motion to dismiss stage, plaintiffs often can get past a Section 230(c)(2) defense by alleging the…
Ad Network Defeats Secondary Copyright Claims–ALS Scan v. JuicyAds
The plaintiff is this case is well-known pornographer/litigator ALS Scan. Today’s case involves an ad network, Tiger Media, which runs the JuicyAds network catering to pornography websites. ALS Scan’s real targets are alleged “pirate Internet sites” with names like imghili.net;…
Court Dumps Crappy Trademark & Keyword Ad Case–ONEPul v. BagSpot
It’s a highlight of my day to read an opinion that starts out: the litigants “are competitors in the dog waste disposal industry.” Blogging can be a crappy gig, but someone’s gotta do it. The litigants have competing offerings that…
Trademark Law Can’t Stop Competitor’s Employee Recruitment Efforts–XPO v. R+L
Con-way and R+L compete in the freight business. XPO bought Con-way, and the acquisition sparked apparently non-speculative concerns that some Con-way employees would be laid off (which layoffs did indeed ensue, e.g., 1, 2). Before any definitive layoff plans were…
Court Cleans Up Trademark Status of the Phrase “Meth Lab Cleanup”
The holy grail of trademark owners is to obtain enforceable trademark rights for the standard ways people talk to each other. If achieved, the trademark owner can put up a toll gate on ordinary conversation and thwart or even shut…
AdWords Buys Using Geographic Terms Support Personal Jurisdiction–Rilley v. MoneyMutual
This is a personal jurisdiction case, so I’ll get right to the point. If an AdWords advertiser buys keywords that contain geographic terms, the advertiser might face a greater risk of personal jurisdiction in those geographies. It’s likely that buying…
Handicapping the Olympic Committee’s Quest to Control Tweeting (Guest Post)
By guest blogger Prof. Alexandra Jane Roberts [Eric’s intro: the Rio Summer Olympic games may be over, but the legal wranglings from the games will keep going and going–even longer than the bike road race (and perhaps with as many…
Talk on Trends in Online Trademark and Marketing Law
In April, I gave a talk in Israel at an inaugural event to celebrate the life and work of Avron Gabrieli, one of Israel’s most venerable and well-known IP lawyers who died in 2015. Initially, the talk topic was styled…