Ruminations on the Likelihood of Consumer Confusion Standard in Trademark Law
By Eric Goldman Last month, I attended the Third Trademark Scholars’ Roundtable in Bloomington, Indiana. See my prior blog posts about the first and second roundtables. See a photo of the participants. As usual, Rebecca acted as event chronicler. See…
Department of Commerce Releases Worthless Report on Trademark Bullying
By Eric Goldman Trademark Litigation Tactics and Federal Government Services to Protect Trademarks and Prevent Counterfeiting, April 2011. [For background, see my earlier blog post on trademark bullies. The term “bully” appears only 4 times in the report; as FN51…
March 2011 Quick Links, Part 2
By Eric Goldman Trademark * Apple is on the road to CrazyTown with its attempt to secure and protect trademark rights in “App Store.” Among the “highlights” this month: – it sued Amazon. Marty’s comments. The Justia page. – Microsoft…
Trademark Owner Gets Injunction Against Keyword Ad Campaign That Generated No Sales for the Advertiser
By Eric Goldman InternetShopsInc.com v. Six C Consulting, Inc., 2011 WL 1113445 (N.D. Ga. March 24, 2011) [I know the headline sounds like an April Fools joke, but no April Fools here…although, as I will show, this case definitely involved…
Groupon Hit With Two Lanham Act Lawsuits, and One Takes Google Along for the Ride
By Eric Goldman Groupion, LLC v. Groupon, Inc., 3:11-cv-00870-EMC (N.D. Cal. complaint filed Feb. 24, 2011) San Francisco Comprehensive Tours, LLC v. Groupon, Inc., CV-1300 (N.D. Cal. complaint filed March 17, 2011) __________ A company doesn’t reach a purported $6B…
Jury Awards Damages Against Web Designer/SEO/Host on Contributory Trademark Infringement Theory–Roger Cleveland v. Prince
By Eric Goldman Roger Cleveland Golf Co. v. Prince, 2:09-cv-02119-MBS (D.S.C. jury verdict March 10, 2011 and judgment March 14, 2011). See also the jury instructions. I blogged about this case back in December. That ruling was a puzzling head-scratcher…
Social Search Services Duel Over “Post Post” Mark — Boathouse Group v. TigerLogic
[Post by Venkat Balasubramani] Boathouse Group v. TigerLogic Corp., 10-12125-NMG (D. Mass.; March 7, 2011) Background: Boathouse developed a “social media search and curation application” called POSTPOST which it launched at postpo.st in August 2010. Its application allows users to…
Important Ninth Circuit Ruling on Keyword Advertising, Plus Recaps of the Past 4 Months of Keyword Ad Decisions
By Eric Goldman Network Automation, Inc. v. Advanced System Concepts, Inc., 2011 WL 815806 (9th Cir. March 8, 2011) [warning: this blog post is nearly 5,000 words] Introduction We’ve had surprisingly few appellate decisions involving keyword advertising generally, and almost…
Stanford Technology Law Review Symposium on Secondary IP Liability
By Eric Goldman Last week we had a cyberlaw-fiesta in the Silicon Valley, the likes of which have been rarely (if ever) seen before. The Stanford Technology Law Review hosted a symposium on Thursday on Internet intermediary liability, then we…
Jan.-Feb. 2011 Quick Links, Part 3 (Trademarks, Domain Names and Trade Secrets Edition)
By Eric Goldman Trademarks and Domain Names * From my perspective, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) domain name seizures are one of the US government’s top 5 all-time worst assaults on the Internet’s integrity. DHS’s ICE division is grabbing…