The Third Circuit ruled today that Section 230 doesn’t preempt publicity rights claims because they qualify as “intellectual property” claims. This ruling directly conflicts with the Ninth Circuit’s rule, which says that all state IP claims are preempted by Section…
It’s time for my annual roundup of my “summer” publications beyond my blogging. Once again, I did not teach last Spring. So here’s what I’ve done in 2021 since I finished my Fall 2020 teaching obligations: Internet Law: Cases &…
State legislatures are competing with each other to see who can enact the most ill-advised laws to impose censorship on the Internet. Florida made a splash enacting its social media censorship bill SB 7072, only to have a federal district…
There are dozens of federal lawsuits captioned “Emoji Company GmbH v. The Individuals, Corporations, Limited Liability Companies, Partnerships, and Unincorporated Associations Identified on Schedule A Hereto.” Last month, in one of them, I filed a declaration stating that “Emojico appears…
Earlier this year, Florida enacted a wide-ranging, complex, poorly drafted, and enthusiastically censorial law, SB7072. Among other problems, the law dictates how “social media platforms” can make their editorial decisions. Fortunately, a Florida federal judge blocked Florida’s social media censorship…
“In-line linking” uses the Internet’s magic to let a web page incorporate a file, such as a photo or video, into a page’s display without actually hosting it. In 2007, in Perfect 10 v. Amazon, the Ninth Circuit ruled that…
by guest blogger Dr. Matthias Pendl, Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law Introduction Emoji are a worldwide phenomenon in modern communication, and so unsurprisingly emoji cases are popping up in Germany as well. Although the number of published…
Check your calendar. Yes, it’s 2021. But trademark plaintiffs and judges are still partying like it’s 1999. The plaintiff is Seeking Arrangements, one of my favorite websites to base my Internet Law exams on. The defendant is a competitor, Luxy….
Plaintiffs underutilitized FOSTA’s new Section 230 exclusions for the first two years after the law’s enactment, but now we are getting FOSTA rulings at a rapid clip. Given FOSTA’s terrible drafting, it’s not surprising that the rulings are not agreeing…
The plaintiff is deaf. He is a serial litigant (“By this Court’s count, Mr. Winegard had filed at least forty-four ADA lawsuits in this district alone as of August 16, 2021”). He says that he can’t watch video on the…