We’ve frequently seen that many people want a “magic wand” that would allow them to decide exactly what search results Google shows for their names. Hence, the popularity of the so-called “right to be forgotten” in Europe, with nearly 1.5M…

By Guest Blogger Stephen F. Diamond At the heart of an important and deeply troubling faculty committee report involving academic freedom at Marquette University is the conclusion that a blog post by a tenured political scientist was “reckless” and thus…

By Guest Blogger Sharon K. Sandeen Part One of this post gave an overview of the new EU Trade Secret Directive (the “TS Directive”) that will be effective shortly (on the twentieth day after it is published in the Official…

Facebook Gets Bad Ruling In Face-Scanning Privacy Case--In re Facebook Biometric Information Privacy Litigation

The plaintiffs allege Facebook’s face-scanning functionality (that underlies its “tag suggestion” feature) violates the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act. Several lawsuits were originally filed in Illinois, but the parties agreed to transfer the cases to the Northern District of California,…

By Guest Blogger Sharon K. Sandeen Several years ago, I noticed something remarkable. After years (decades really) of being ignored, trade secret law was finally getting the attention it deserved, and on both sides of the Atlantic. First came the…

512 Safe Harbor Applies to Content Submitted By Independent Contractors--BWP v. Examiner

BWP owns the rights to various celebrity photos. Examiner.com is a “entertainment, news and lifestyle network” that relies on content submitted by independent contractors confusingly called “examiners.” The Examiner’s written agreement specifies that “the examiners” are contractors, not employees. The…

Last week, Congress passed the Defend Trade Secrets Act (the DTSA), which President Obama will sign soon. The Defend Trade Secrets Act extends the current Economic Espionage Act of 1996, which criminalizes certain trade secret misappropriations, to allow civil lawsuits….

[Note: my colleague Colleen Chien has circulated this call for participation. I won’t be directly involved in either event, but they look terrific. I’m sharing it here in case you or someone in your network wants to participate. Please follow…

Proposed EU Regulation on Cross-Border Access to Copyrighted Content (Guest Blog Post)

by Guest Blogger Marketa Trimble When the European Commission issued its initial documents (here and here) in May 2015 regarding the Single Digital Market and geoblocking on the internet, the tone of the documents, and in particular their apparent vilification…

Important and Troubling Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA) Ruling From First Circuit--Yershov v. Gannett

This is a Video Privacy Protection Act case alleging that Gannett, the owner of USA Today, improperly disclosed personally identifiable information to Adobe. Adobe offers analytics services to its clients by collecting user information and building user profiles. As alleged…