By Jake McGowan Rosen v. Netfronts, CV 12-658 CAS (C.D. Cal. July 9, 2013) What happens when a website operator takes down a potentially copyright-infringing item, only to have it reappear through a technical mix-up? On July 9, a district…
By Eric Goldman Lisa Zaltz v. JDate, 2013 WL 3369073 (E.D.N.Y. July 8, 2013). Lisa Zaltz is a former member of JDate (a property of Spark Networks). She is unhappy with JDate for a laundry list of reasons (I had a…
By Eric Goldman 1-800 Contacts, Inc. v. Lens.com, Inc., 2013 WL 3665627 (10th Cir. July 16, 2013) Here are some things I hate: * duplicitous litigants, such as plaintiffs who buy competitive keyword advertising yet sue competitors for doing the…
By Eric Goldman Do you want movie producers to tell you when they have accepted money from brand owners to showcase their brands in movies, a phenomenon called product placement? Most people would say yes. We dislike thinking that we’re…
[Post by Venkat Balasubramani] Rodriguez v. Widener Univ., 12-1226, (E.D. Pa. June 17, 2013) Rodriguez was enrolled at Widener under the G.I. Bill, and was earning above-average grades. He had some friction with his advisor over their respective views of…
By Eric Goldman Braverman v. Yelp, Inc., 2013 NY Slip Op 31407 (NY Sup. Ct June 28, 2013) Mal Braverman is a Manhattan dentist. He sued Yelp for defamation based on two allegedly defamatory user posts. I’m not sure which…
By Eric Goldman Ira Arnstein is well-known to most IP professors as the named plaintiff in the copyright classic Arnstein v. Porter from 1946 (also see this case archive). The Second Circuit’s opinion is a landmark ruling that appears in…
[Post by Venkat Balasubramani] West Virginia Department of Transportation v. Litten, 2013 WL 2662712 (W. Va. Ct. App. June 5, 2013) [pdf] Litten worked as a mechanic for the West Virginia Dept of Highway. He was fired for accessing porn…
[Post by Venkat Balasubramani with a comment by Eric; followed by a massive supplement from Eric] [Eric’s intro: sometimes, a draft blog post misses the publication window and then comes out painfully late. Venkat drafted the first draft of this…
By Eric Goldman The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) hates inauthentic online content. To combat this perceived ill, the FTC has been waging a multi-year battle against surreptitious ads online. The FTC has been quite clear about what it wants online…