Lemley on Online Safe Harbors
By Eric Goldman Mark Lemley, Rationalizing Internet Safe Harbors Mark Lemley has weighed in on an topic near and dear to my heart–secondary liability online. He advances two principal arguments in his paper. First, it would make sense to harmonize…
2007 Cyberspace Law Syllabus
By Eric Goldman I’ve posted my 2007 Cyberlaw syllabus. Unlike the past few years, which were a little slow cyberlaw-wise, the past 12 months saw a lot of important developments. Let me recap some of changes I made to my…
Food Tastes Better When Branded “McDonalds”
By Eric Goldman Recently I blogged on a study showing that consumers like search results more when they are branded as coming from Google, even if the search results are substantively identical. We now have a similar study, this time…
July 2007 Quick Links, Part I
By Eric Goldman Search Engines * According to this study, up to 40% of search queries are “re-finding queries” (i.e., the searcher is trying to re-find previously viewed information). The implication: “Because people repeat queries so frequently, search engines should…
Third Circuit Bounces Lawsuit Over Google Groups–Parker v. Google
By Eric Goldman Parker v. Google, Inc., No. 06-3074 (3d Cir. July 10, 2007) Parker v. Google was one of the troika of district court opinions involving Google and copyright from Q1 2006 (along with the Perfect 10 and Field…
Credit Card Providers Aren’t Liable for Third Party Infringement–Perfect 10 v. Visa
By Eric Goldman Perfect 10, Inc. v. Visa International Service Association, No. 05-15170 (9th Cir. July 3, 2007) The Ninth Circuit has completed a hat trick of appeals involving Perfect 10’s litigation frenzy over online infringement of Perfect 10’s copyrighted…
Google Subpoenaed for Keyword Purchase Data–Rhino Sports v. Sport Court
By Eric Goldman Rhino Sports, Inc. v. Sport Court, 02-1815 PHX-JAT and 06-0366 PHX-JAT (N.D. Cal. subpoena duces tecum issued June 14, 2007) We’re all aware that Google has plenty of good personal information that can be discoverable. But until…
June 2007 Quick Links
By Eric Goldman Email * Spam cases are coming at a regular clip, and it’s tricky divining the latest state of the law. Two recent cases that caught my attention: – US v. Impulse Media Group, 2007 WL 1725560 (W.D….
American Blinds Sanctioned
By Eric Goldman Google Inc. v. American Blind & Wallpaper Factory, Inc., 2007 WL 1848665 (N.D. Cal. June 27, 2007) The Google v. American Blinds trial is scheduled to start November 9, 2007. Last week, Google won a discovery dispute…
Another Court in 2d Cir. Says Buying Keyword Ads Isn’t TM Use in Commerce–FragranceNet.com v. FragranceX.com
By Eric Goldman FragranceNet.com, Inc. v. FragranceX.com, Inc., 2007 WL 1821153 (E.D.N.Y. June 12, 2007) This case shows the deepening split between the Second Circuit and other circuits on keyword triggering as TM use in commerce. This is now the…