Trademark Registrant Isn’t Required to Shut Down Competitive Keyword Advertisers–STK v. Backrack
…majority of their opinions. Deborah Gerhardt, Leah Chan Grinvald and I are writing two companion articles on trademark policing doctrines. Our basic thesis is that the trademark policing “duty” is…
Backpage Gets TRO Against Washington Law Attempting to Bypass Section 230–Backpage v. McKenna
By Eric Goldman Backpage.com, LLC v. McKenna, 2:12-cv-00954-RSM (W.D. Wash. June 5, 2012). The complaint. Backpage’s TRO motion. As part of states’ ongoing crusade against online prostitution ads, earlier this…
Satirical Anti-Birther Blog Post Protected by DC’s Anti-SLAPP Law–Farah v. Esquire
…day after the release of Corsi’s book, Mark Warren posted a blog post to Esquire.com’s Politics Blog under the tag “humor.” The blog post was entitled “BREAKING: Jerome Corsi’s Birther…
LLC Members in Online Store Venture Bound by Partnership Fiduciary Duties — Health and Body Store v. Justbrand Limited
…on how often we see these disputes, parties can’t be reminded of the necessity for clear documentation often enough. Hotheadz’s trademark claims based on the “Hotheadz” marks were muddled and…
Trademark Trolling by SEO Consultant Provides Cautionary Anti-SOPA Tale (and Other Lessons)–Premier Pool Management v. Lusk
…Trademark Trolling. As described in the opinion, the Lusks were a classic trademark troll–they bought up weak trademark rights from a third party to build a “licensing”/enforcement business around extracting…
New York Judge *Slams* Bittorrent Copyright Plaintiffs – K-Beech; Malibu Media; and Patrick Collins v. Does
…another case in New York, it tried to remedy this by adding “conclusory trademark claims.” [??] When K-Beech’s briefing veered into discussing reputational harm from unauthorized downloads, the court in…
Facebook “Likes” Aren’t Speech Protected By the First Amendment–Bland v. Roberts
…discussed here: “It’s Officially Legal: Facebook Friends Don’t Count”), but it’s well off the mark to say in this case that “likes” were not speech for First Amendment purposes. As…
Cautionary Tale for Settling Trademark Cases–Tormented Souls v. Tormented Souls Motorcycle Club
…Soul’ mark.” I believe this is pretty standard language for trademark settlement agreements. The trademark owner protested that it could subsequently find a MySpace profile (those still exist???) named “Tormented…
Fourth Circuit’s Rosetta Stone v. Google Opinion Pushes Back Resolution of Keyword Advertising Legality Another 5-10 Years
…hold that Google *directly* liable for trademark infringement for keyword ad sales, because Google’s products/services or marketing do not confuse consumers about the source and origin of marketplace offerings. If…
Brief Brand Reference in TV Ad Constitutes Trademark Dilution–Louis Vuitton v. Hyundai
…Back in 2007, we held a major academic symposium on the trademark dilution doctrine at SCU. My main goal was to see if two dozen leading trademark academics could find…