By Eric Goldman Herman v. Xcentric Ventures, LLC, 1:10-cv-00398-CAP (N.D. Ga. Feb. 14, 2011) This is a run-of-the-mill lawsuit against the Ripoff Report by an unhappy vendor. Herman is a lawyer (once again, the dreaded lawyer-as-plaintiff) unhappy with a posted…
By Eric Goldman I have gotten several emails relaying this announcement from Microsoft: We are writing to alert you to some pending changes to the trademark policy within the Microsoft Advertising adCenter Intellectual Property Guidelines. Starting March 3, 2011, adCenter…
[Post by Venkat Balasubramani] Gutierrez v. Barclays Group, Case No. 10cv1012 DMS (BGS) (S.D. Cal.; Feb. 9, 2011) The Telephone Consumer Protection Act is a big stick. And it’s being wielded against debt collectors. Plaintiffs (a husband and wife) applied…
By Eric Goldman Earlier this week, I spoke at a PLI event, “Social Media 2011: Addressing Corporate Risks,” on the topic of “Defamation, False Information and 47 USC 230” (this link takes you to the talk slides). I tried to…
[Post by Venkat Balasubramani] Pineda v. Williams-Sonoma, S178241 (Cal. Supreme Court; Feb. 10, 2011) Plaintiff made a purchase at Williams-Sonoma and when she went to pay, the cashier asked for plaintiff’s ZIP code. Thinking she was required to provide it…
By Eric Goldman I have a busy semester of talks, so I will be rolling out some talk slides over the next few days. Today, I’m posting my talk slides from a talk I gave last month at the University…
By Eric Goldman Evans v. Linden Research, Inc. (E.D. Pa. Feb. 3, 2011) This lawsuit is similar to the Bragg lawsuit from a few years ago, which argued that land purchases in Second Life were equivalent to real property purchases…
[Post by Venkat Balasubramani] Robins v. Spokeo, 10-cv-05306 (C.D. Cal. Jan. 27, 2011) Spokeo is a website that bills itself as an aggregator of hard-to-find information about people. Robins filed a complaint against Spokeo for violation of the Fair Credit…
By Eric Goldman I have posted my book chapter, The Regulation of Reputational Information, which I published as part of The Next Digital Decade compilation I’ve previously mentioned. I have another version of this chapter coming out later this year…
By Eric Goldman James Grimmelmann, Some Skepticism About Search Neutrality, in THE NEXT DIGITAL DECADE: ESSAYS ON THE FUTURE OF THE INTERNET (Berin Szoka & Adam Marcus, eds. 2010). James Grimmelmann wrote a terrific must-read book chapter on search neutrality….