June 2006 Quick Links
By Eric Goldman I have had virtually no Internet access over the past 10 days due to my move and travels, so my Bloglines account was bulging with more than 1700 articles. Here’s a quick look at some of the…
Search Engines Awarded Legal Fees in Unmeritorious Copyright Case–Newborn v. Yahoo
By Eric Goldman Newborn v. Yahoo, 2006 WL 1409769 (D.D.C. May 23, 2006) I blogged about this case in November 2005. At that time, the plaintiff sued Yahoo and Google under copyright and trademark law because the search engines had…
O’Reilly and the “Web 2.0” Trademark
By Eric Goldman O’Reilly Media is a publisher of technical books. They also operate some technical conferences, including the “O’Reilly Web 2.0 Conference.” They are in the process of registering a trademark in the phrase “Web 2.0” for Arranging and…
Merck v. Mediplan Redux–Keyword Purchases Really Aren’t Trademark Use
By Eric Goldman Merck & Co. v. Mediplan Health Consulting, Inc., 2006 WL 1418616 (SDNY motion for reconsideration denied May 24, 2006) In late March, the legality of the search engine keyword advertising industry got very murky due to two…
Edina Realty v. TheMLSOnline Settles
By Eric Goldman The Edina Realty v. TheMLSOnline case, which held (among other things) that purchasing a trademarked keyword was a trademark use in commerce, has reportedly settled, according to the Associated Press. That leaves in place the conflict between…
Cynical Consumers and Brand Antipathy
By Eric Goldman Interesting article in the NYT about negative consumer attitudes towards brands. The article says that “cynical consumers [desire] not simply to avoid companies and brands they dislike but also to punish them.” Thus, consumers may use their…
Quick Links May 2006
By Eric Goldman My blogging queue has gotten too thick. Here’s some items that caught my attention that I’ve been meaning to blog and simply haven’t gotten to. * I previously blogged about Chris Wilson, the website operator who allowed…
Yahoo “Syndication Fraud” Lawsuits–Crafts by Veronica v. Yahoo and Draucker Development v. Yahoo
By Eric Goldman Crafts by Veronica v. Yahoo, Inc., No. 2:06-cv-01985-JCL-MF (D. N.J. complaint filed May 1, 2006) Draucker Development v. Yahoo, Inc., No. CV06-2737 (C.D. Cal. complaint filed May 4, 2006) Two companion lawsuits against Yahoo for what the…
Calboli on Geographic Indications of Origin and TRIPs
By Eric Goldman My colleague Irene Calboli has posted “Expanding the Protection of Geographical Indications of Origin under TRIPS: Old Debate or New Opportunity?” to SSRN. This article does a good job recapping the different policy perspectives about GIs. The…
Keyword Purchases Not a Trademark Use–Merck v. Mediplan Health Consulting
By Eric Goldman Merck & Co. v. Mediplan Health Consulting, 2006 WL 800756 (SDNY Mar. 30, 2006) About a week after Edina Realty v. TheMLSonline allowed a keyword purchase of a competitor’s trademark to go to trial, we got another…