January 2007 Quick Links
By Eric Goldman * Marketers (including Microsoft) are paying authors to write Wikipedia entries. Surprised?! * Also on the topic of Wikipedia and marketers, Wikipedia has tagged all of their pages NOFOLLOW so that there’s no way a marketer or…
Google Goes After Stoller
By Eric Goldman Google v. Central Mfg Inc., No. 07CV 385 (N.D. Ill. complaint filed Jan. 19, 2007) Leo Stoller is a notorious figure in the trademark community, especially among the hundreds (thousands?) of trademark owners he’s targeted with demands…
Rescuecom v. Google Appellant Brief
By Eric Goldman Rescuecom v. Google, 06-4881-CV (2nd Circuit appellant brief filed January 12, 2007) You may recall Rescuecom v. Google, which held that Google was not making a trademark use in commerce by selling trademarked keywords. This ruling resulted…
INTA Roundtable: Legal Issues in Marketing and Advertising
By Eric Goldman I plan to participate in INTA’s Roundtable on Legal Issues in Marketing and Advertising in Palo Alto January 30. I’m not quite sure what to expect from the roundtable (this will be my first INTA Roundtable event),…
December 2006 Quick Links
By Eric Goldman * JP Enterprises, Inc. v. HDVE, LLC, 1:06-cv-01046-REB-PAC (D. Colo.). In June 2006, JP Enterprises sued Yahoo for selling its trademarks for keyword-triggered ads. In December, JP Enterprises and Yahoo stipulated a dismissal of the case against…
Competitive Keyword Purchase Doesn’t Contribute to Actual Dilution–Nautilus v. Icon
By Eric Goldman Nautilus Group, Inc. v. Icon Health & Fitness, Inc., 2006 WL 3761367 (W.D. Wa. Dec. 21, 2006) In a long-running dispute, BowFlex sued competitor CrossBow for trademark dilution. CrossBow moved for summary judgment, claiming (among other things)…
Keyword Ads and Metatags Don’t Confuse Consumers–J.G. Wentworth v. Settlement Funding
By Eric Goldman J.G. Wentworth SSC Ltd v. Settlement Funding LLC, No. 06-0597 (E.D. Pa. Jan. 4, 2007) The keyword advertising legal roller-coaster continues. Last time I blogged on the matter in the Buying for the Home case, I indicated…
Top Cyberlaw Developments of 2006
By Eric Goldman and John Ottaviani [Eric’s Note: I will be in Israel for the rest of the year. So while it’s a little premature to publish an end-of-the-year recap, this may be my last post for the year. John…
Nov. 2006 Quick Links
By Eric Goldman My monthly roundup of noteworthy tidbits: * Yesmail, an email outsource vendor, was busted by the FTC under CAN-SPAM for failing to honor opt-out requests because Yesmail’s incoming email filters blocked those opt-out requests as spam. This…
Griping Blog Post Leads to Lawsuit–BidZirk v. Smith
By Eric Goldman BidZirk, LLC v. Smith, 2006 WL 3242333 (D.S.C. Nov. 7, 2006) Despite all of the hype about blog law, the reality is that we’ve had comparatively few blog-specific lawsuits. As a result, we give extra attention to…