“Duck Tours” Is Generic–Boston Duck Tours v. Super Duck Tours
By Eric Goldman Boston Duck Tours LP v. Super Duck Tours LLC, 2008 WL 2444480 (1st Cir. June 18, 2008) I previously blogged on this dispute in December. The case involved the defendant’s purchase of keyword advertising triggered by the…
Keyword Metatags and Keyword-Triggered Ads Don’t Create Initial Interest Confusion–Designer Skin v. S&L Vitamins
By Eric Goldman Designer Skin, LLC v. S & L Vitamins, Inc., 2008 WL 2116646 (D. Ariz. May 20, 2008) An Arizona district court has ruled that the surreptitious use of trademarks doesn’t create a likelihood of initial interest confusion,…
May 2008 Quick Links, Part 1 (Trademarks/Domain Names Edition)
By Eric Goldman * Syncsort Inc. v. Innovative Routines Intern., Inc., 2008 WL 1925304 (D.N.J. April 30, 2008). Including a third party trademark in a keyword metatag qualified as nominative use. (Along the same lines, see the Designer Skin case…
Connecticut Blogger Not Subject to Texas Jurisdiction–Healix Infusion v. Helix Health
By Eric Goldman Healix Infusion Therapy, Inc. v. Helix Health, LLC, 2008 WL 1883546 (S.D. Tex. Apr 25, 2008) I’ve mentioned before that I try to avoid blogging about Internet jurisdictional cases, but occasionally an interesting jurisdictional case comes along….
Keyword Law Talk at MLRC
By Eric Goldman Last week I spoke at the Legal Frontiers in Digital Media conference at Stanford, organized by the Media Law Resource Center. The topic was online advertising, and I was allotted 10 minutes to recap the state of…
Lifestyle Lift v. RealSelf Settles
By Eric Goldman In early March, I blogged on Lifestyle Lift’s trademark infringement lawsuit against RealSelf based on user criticisms of Lifestyle Lift. This lawsuit was noteworthy on at least two fronts. First, it was a prime example of a…
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 II
By Eric Goldman Copyright * A lot of action on whether “making available” a file in a P2P share directory is copyright infringement, including Elektra v. Barker and London-Sire v. Doe. Patry summarizes the action. * Ticketmaster L.L.C. v. RMG…