Cyberlaw

Tiffany v. eBay

EBay Inc did not engage in trademark infringement and dilution by selling counterfeit Tiffany & Co goods on its website, a U.S. appeals court ruled on Thursday, but it ordered further review of the jeweler's claim of false advertising.

Tiffany and other luxury brands have long argued that counterfeit merchandise bearing their names is sold on eBay. The Web commerce company, which does not itself put the goods up for sale, says it has spent millions of dollars to track down counterfeiters and remove such listings.

See Reuters and BusinessWeek

Trial Decision and Second Circuit Appeal Decision

Who can regulate the Internet?

The DC Circuit court recently vacated the FCC's order imposing sanctions on Comcast Corp. for its network management practices.  It held that the Commission failed to tie its assertion of ancillary regulatory authority over Comcast's Internet service to any "statutorily mandated responsibility."

"In this case we must decide whether the Federal Communications Commission has authority to regulate an Internet service provider’s network management practices. ..."

Here is the opinion: http://pacer.cadc.uscourts.gov/common/opinions/201004/08-1291-1238302.pdf

How I Got Sued by Facebook

http://petewarden.typepad.com/searchbrowser/

How I got sued by Facebook

...Their contention was robots.txt had no legal force and they could sue anyone for accessing their site even if they scrupulously obeyed the instructions it contained.

http://www.itwire.com/it-policy-news/regulation/38101-pete-warden-vs-facebook-a-case-of-too-much-data-access

Pete Warden vs. Facebook: a case of too much data access

... Pete Warden had a really great idea: to map the friendship interactions of Facebook users to aid with geospatial analysis of user relationships. Facebook's lawyers had a different view.

Hot News

"Breathing some new life into the “hot news” doctrine, Judge Cote of the Southern District of New York recently issued a permanent injunction requiring the Internet-based financial news site TheFlyOnTheWall.com (Fly) to delay its reporting of stock recommendations from Wall Street research analysts. ..."

See Case Note for Barclays Capital, Inc., Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Inc., and Morgan Stanley & Co., Inc. v. THEFLYONTHEWALL.COM , 06 Civ. 4908 (S.D.N.Y. 2010)

Meta-tags and Google Keywords - TM infringement

A recent Queensland case concerning trademark infringement issues, relating to Internet marketing. The case considers Google AdWords keywords, meta-tags and domain names in the context of trademark infringement.

See Mantra Group v. Tailly Pty Ltd

Tailly operated businesses under names such as "Circle on Cavill Private Apartments" and "A1 Gold Coast Holidays". Tailly went into bankruptcy last Thursday.

ACCC v. Trading Post

The case against Google & the Trading Post by the ACCC continues.

See judgment regarding amendment to claim.

In week 6, we will look at laws and current issues relating to content on the internet.

Should freedom of speech on the internet prevail over protection of the public interest?

What are the relevant public interests?

Should there by government regulation, or reliance on technology? See NetNanny for example.
Some current issues from around the world include:

China / Google

Venezuela

Nigeria

Australia

United States

Spain

Google Adwords Decision in Europe

See note on IPRights website.

News

"With traditional print circulation declining and advertising revenue weak — both from online and from print — media companies are trying to extract new sources of revenue from online readers, despite the risk that they could alienate some by charging for access.

The Wall Street Journal, also owned by News Corp., The Financial Times and Newsday all charge for access. The New York Times has announced a plan to do so. Each has a payment system developed largely in-house.

News Corp. announced in August that all of its titles would move to charging for Web access. Its chairman and chief executive, Rupert Murdoch, threatened last year to remove his publications’ stories from Google's search index to encourage people to pay for content online."

See NYT

Google, China and Content Regulation

From The New York Times:

What Happens as Google Uncensors Search in China?

Google has stopped censoring results on its Chinese search engine, but many underlying pages are still blocked. Meanwhile, some Chinese say Google risks a government shutdown of its service.

http://s.nyt.com/u/68V

Issues in Creating a Social Website

"...As a result of this trend, companies that were long content to have a Web site consisting of nothing more than an online brochure are now actively exploring creating Web sites with social media capabilities. Before implementing social media capabilities (e.g., hosting user-generated content, giving users the ability to share content with other members of the Web site community), though, the company should weigh the business justification for doing so, because the legal issues involved can be tricky. "

See this article

http://www.kilpatrickstockton.com/

Google and Copyright

Viacom and Google broke their silence Thursday in their legal battle, as Viacom claimed that Google's YouTube unit had sought to exploit copyrighted works for profit, while Google argued that Viacom itself had secretly uploaded copyrighted clips it later demanded YouTube remove. The claims are among the many divulged as a federal judge and the parties to the case released a slew of documents.