Why The Subway 'Footlong' Lawsuits Fell Short (Forbes Cross-Post)

You may recall the lawsuit against Subway Restaurants for selling “12 inch” and “footlong” sandwiches that were allegedly less than 12 inches long. The case attracted lots of media attention and consumer sniggers because of Subway’s ubiquity (and the endless…

Customer Loses Suit Over Employees' Disparaging Facebook Posts--Howard v. Hertz

This is a case involving allegedly discriminatory and disparaging Facebook posts made by a Hertz employee. A customer (Maurice Howard) alleged that he was the subject of a Facbook posts and comments by Hertz employees. The initial post, by Shawn…

CSS and HTML Code May Be Copyrightable--Media.net v. Netseer

Media.net and Netseer both offer contextual advertising services. Their clients place ad units on their website and, when visitors click on ads, they are taken to a “search results” page. Media.net accused Netseer of copyright infringement and various state law…

Using Scraper to Harvest Records Isn't Fraudulent Access Under CFAA--Fidlar v. LPS

Fidlar works with counties to digitize and index land records. It also makes available a software client (Laredo) that allows end users to access these records. Billing is handled by the counties, and counties have monthly access plans. The counties…

Posting Vacation Photos To Facebook Costs An Employee His Job--Jones v. Accentia (Forbes Cross-Post)

[Note: inexplicably, over at Forbes, this became my most-read blog post ever, with about a quarter-million views–even though it’s a short, breezy and quickly written post that I posted during the dead time of Sunday mid-morning.] Before the Internet, people…

Telephony Provider Didn't Properly Form a "Telephone-Wrap" Contract--James v. Global Tel*Link

Plaintiffs filed a putative class over fees paid for calls made by inmates in New Jersey correctional institutions. At issue is whether they should be required to arbitrate their claims. Defendant, GTL, has the exclusive right to provide phone services…

Court Beats Down Another Competitive Keyword Advertising Lawsuit--Beast Sports v. BPI

If you’ve been keeping up with the blog over the past several years, you already know that competitive keyword advertising lawsuits consistently lose in court. So in that sense, today’s blog post isn’t telling you anything new. Yet, it’s still…

Courtney Love Defeats Twibel Claims--Holmes v. Love

Courtney Love Cobain, tweeting with two twitter users (“fairnewsspears” and “noozjunkie”), stated she: was fucking devasted when Rhonda J. Holmes, Esquire, of San Diego was bought off @FairNewsSpears perhaps you can get a quote Holmes was a lawyer who had…

Section 230 Doesn't Protect Summaries of Third Party Remarks--Diamond Ranch Academy v. Filer

Diamond Ranch Academy runs a “residential youth treatment facility” in Utah. Chelsea Filer (nee Chelsea Papciak) runs a website, DRASurvivors.com, critical of Diamond Ranch Academy. Diamond Ranch Academy sued her for defamation and tortious interference in Utah. For reasons not…

Court Orders Uber To Control Its Google Search Results

What happens when national trademarks, used on the borderless Internet, conflict with regional trademarks? This is one of the most venerable topics in Internet Law; see, e.g., the Blue Note case from 20 years ago. More recently, Jake blogged about…