Competitor’s Keyword Ad Purchase May Be Trademark Infringement–Edina Realty v. TheMLSonline
By Eric Goldman Edina Realty, Inc. v. TheMLSonline.com, 2006 WL 737064 (D. Minn. Mar. 20, 2006) There have been many lawsuits involving keyword advertising, but in most of the reported decisions, the search engines were the defendants. There have been…
Trademark Dilution Revision Act Update
By Eric Goldman It’s been a while since I’ve blogged on the Trademark Dilution Revision Act, HR 683 (now the Trademark Dilution Revision Act of 2006). The bill keeps chugging along. In February, it passed the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously…
Barrett on Internet Trademark Use
By Eric Goldman Margreth Barrett, a law professor at UC Hastings, has published Internet Trademark Suits and the Demise of “Trademark Use,” 39 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 371 (2006). The article makes a persuasive argument that the trademark use doctrine…
Top Cyberspace IP Cases of 2005
By John Ottaviani (with help from Eric) Cyberspace continues to present fascinating and novel intellectual property issues. What follows is our attempt at identifying some of the more significant “Cyberspace Intellectual Property” decisions of 2005. Once again, it was quite…
10th Circuit Recognizes Initial Interest Confusion Doctrine–Australian Gold v. Hatfield
By Eric Goldman Australian Gold, Inc. v. Hatfield, 2005 WL 3739862 (10th Cir. Feb. 7, 2006) Following on a regressive initial interest confusion/metatags case from January, last week the 10th Circuit found initial interest confusion based on metatag usage and…
BitTorrent to Enforce BITTORRENT Trademark
Mark Schultz BitTorrent makes the news once again, this time as a trademark enforcer. ZDNet reports that the company formed by BitTorrent creator Bram Cohen, BitTorrent, Inc., will begin asserting trademark rights in BITTORRENT against software developers who make unauthorized…
Metatags as Per Se Trademark Infringement–Tdata v. Aircraft Technical Publishers
By Eric Goldman Good grief. Lawsuits over metatag usage are so 1999. Yet, we continue to get a steady stream of cases that treat inclusion of a competitor’s trademark in a metatag as a per se trademark infringement. I’ve explained…
The NFL’s SUPER BOWL Will Be Held on SUPER SUNDAY
By John Ottaviani A sports report on the local radio station broadcast this morning reminded me that we are in our annual period where the NFL causes all broadcasters to step “through the looking glass” and act in accordance with…
RipoffReport.com Loses 47 USC 230 Motion to Dismiss–Hy Cite v. badbusinessbureau.com
By Eric Goldman Hy Cite Corp. v. badbusinessbureau.com, 2005 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 38082 (D. Ariz. Dec. 27, 2005) This is the third 47 USC 230 ruling involving badbusinessbureau.com/RipoffReport.com. The first two were: * MCW, Inc. v. Badbusinessbureau.com, L.L.C., 2004 WL…
Google Sued for Trademark Infringement Based on Third Level Subdomain–Jews for Jesus v. Google
By Eric Goldman Jews for Jesus v. Google, Inc., 05-CV-10684 (SDNY complaint filed Dec. 21, 2005) It’s no surprise that Google has been sued again for trademark infringement, but the basis of this lawsuit is surprising. Rather than another lawsuit…