By Eric Goldman UMG Recordings, Inc. v. Veoh Networks Inc., 2010 WL 1407316 (C.D. Cal. April 6, 2010) Copyright law contains a statutory fee-shifting/”loser pays” provision (17 USC 505) that, in specified circumstances, gives the judge discretion to award attorneys’…

By Guest Blogger Tyler Ochoa Today marks the 300th Anniversary of the effective date of the Statute of Anne, the first modern copyright law. Although copyright law has changed a great deal in the past 300 years, the legacy of…

[Post by Venkat] Saffold v. Plain Dealer Publishing Co., Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas (filed April 7, 2010) [scribd] A judge/commenter who was unmasked by the Cleveland Plain Dealer is reportedly suing the newspaper for 50 million dollars. (h/t…

By Eric Goldman I continue to see a troubling number of cases in Westlaw that involve an overaged male and underaged female having illegal sex, in some case facilitated by a social networking site (especially MySpace). In the past few…

By Guest Blogger Yoram Lichtenstein, Adv. [Eric’s note: Yoram previously shared some perspectives on a case involving live streaming of sports events. He now writes about another one of his cases, this time involving online aggregation websites. He represented the…

[Post by Venkat] Robinson v. Wix Filtration Corp. LLC, 4th Cir. (Mar. 26, 2010) [scribd] The Fourth Circuit recently held that the district court properly granted summary judgment in favor of a defendant, and rejected plaintiff’s argument that counsel’s failure…

By Eric Goldman Miller v. Facebook, Inc., 2010 WL 1292708 (N.D. Cal. March 31, 2010) Miller developed a videogame called Boomshine. He is upset that Yeo made an allegedly infringing knockoff variation of the game, called ChainRxn, and distributed the…

By Eric Goldman Collins v. Purdue University, 2010 WL 1250916 (N.D. Ind. March 24, 2010) The plaintiff, Timothy J. Collins, III, is a Purdue student. The defendant in this ruling is Federated Publications, which publishes a Lafayette, Indiana daily newspaper,…

[Post by Venkat] Asis Internet Services v. Subscriberbase Inc., (N.D. Cal.) Case No. 09-3505 SC; April 1, 2010 [scribd] Judge Conti (in the Northern District of California) issued a potentially significant decision last week that keeps the door open for…

[Post by Venkat] Melkonian v. Facebook, Orange County Superior Court Case No. 30-2009-00293755-CU-BT-CJC [complaint] In August of last year, prominent plaintiffs’ lawyer Mark Lanier filed a privacy lawsuit against Facebook on behalf of a group of plaintiffs. [WSJ Law blog]…