Podcasts

Facebook victorious in lawsuit brought by kicked-off user

Posted on November 02, 2010
Young v. Facebook, 2010 WL 4269304 (N.D. Cal. October 25, 2010) Plaintiff took offense to a certain Facebook page critical of Barack Obama and spoke out on Facebook in opposition. In response, many other Facebook users allegedly poked fun at plaintiff, sometimes using offensive Photoshopped versions of her profile picture...

Customer violated software license by letting attorneys use application

Posted on October 27, 2010
The Compliance Store v. Greenpoint Mortgage Funding, — F.3d —, 2010 WL 4056112 (5th Cir. October 18, 2010) A federal court in Texas has decided a case that could have notable implications for both providers and users of software. The court took a narrow view of the rights that licensees of software have to authorize [...

Stored Communications Act protects Yahoo email account from subpoena

Posted on October 20, 2010
Chasten v. Franklin, 2010 WL 4065606 (N.D.Cal. October 14, 2010) Plaintiff sued some corrections officers at the prison where her inmate son was killed. She learned in a deposition that one of the defendants had a Yahoo email account. So she sent a subpoena to Yahoo seeking all the email messages sent from that account [...

Debt collector broke the law by using MySpace photo to intimidate consumer

Posted on October 14, 2010
Sohns v. Bramacint, 2010 WL 3926264 (D.Minn. October 1, 2010) Plaintiff fell behind on her car payments. The lender turned the debt over to a collection agency that used technology and some remarkably poor judgment in an attempt to get paid. The first bad decision was to use a caller-ID spoofer to make it look [...

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Blog post violated nonsolicitation clause in Amway agreement

Posted on October 13, 2010
Amway Global v. Woodward, 2010 WL 3927661 (E.D.Mich. September 30, 2010) Amway Global went after some of its former distributors in arbitration for, among other things, violating the “Rules of Conduct” which serve as an agreement as to how the distributors (formally known as Independent Business Owners or “IBOs”) operate...

Emails on laptop not protected by the Stored Communications Act

Posted on October 12, 2010
Thompson v. Ross, 2010 WL 3896533 (W.D. Pa. September 30, 2010) Messages from Yahoo and AOL email accounts saved on laptop computer were not in “electronic storage” as defined by Stored Communications Act. Plaintiff’s ex-girlfriend kept his laptop computer after the two of them broke up...

Bipolar disorder no excuse for email hacker

Posted on October 12, 2010
Leor Exploration v. Aguiar, 2010 WL 3782195 (S.D. Fla. September 28, 2010) Plaintiffs claimed that defendant hacked into one of the plaintiffs’ email accounts during the litigation to get an advantage in the case. The court entered severe sanctions against defendant for doing this — it struck his answer...

Personal name in web search results did not support Lanham Act claim

Posted on October 08, 2010
Stayart v. Yahoo, — F.3d —, 2010 WL 3785147 (September 30, 2010) Plaintiff performed a vanity search of her own name on Yahoo and found some results on porn and pharmaceutical sites. When Yahoo would not remove the search results upon plaintiff’s request, plaintiff sued under Section 43(a) of the Lanham Act...

Deliberate exploitation of market subjects GoDaddy to personal jurisdiction in Illinois

Posted on October 07, 2010
uBid v. GoDaddy, — F.3d —, 2010 WL 3768075 (7th Cir. September 29, 2010) uBid sued GoDaddy in federal court in Illinois, alleging cybersquatting. uBid claimed that GoDaddy — an Arizona-based company, intended to profit in bad faith by registering on behalf of its customers certain domain names that were similar to uBid’s trademarks...

Palin email hacker conviction survives motion for acquittal

Posted on October 04, 2010
U.S. v. Kernell, No. 08-CR-142 (E.D. Tenn. September 23, 2010) A federal jury convicted defendant for a number of crimes related to his hacking into Sarah Palin’s Yahoo email account in September 2008. One of the crimes the jury convicted him of was the “destruction or alteration of a record or document with the intent [...

Section 230 shields Google from liability for anonymous defamation

Posted on October 02, 2010
Black v. Google Inc., 2010 WL 3746474 (N.D.Cal. September 20, 2010) Back in August, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California dismissed a lawsuit against Google brought by two pro se plaintiffs, holding that the action was barred under the immunity provisions of 47 USC 230...

Hiring subscribers to access competitor?s database gives rise to misappropriation claim

Posted on October 01, 2010
Reed Construction Data v. McGraw Hill Companies, No. 09-8578 (S.D.N.Y. September 14, 2010) Plaintiff and defendant are fierce competitors that provide project news and information to the construction industry. (Really the parties are the only nationwide providers in this market space...

Divorce attorney did not conspire to violate the Electronic Communications Privacy Act

Posted on September 30, 2010
Court declines to recognize secondary liability for civil ECPA violation, holding that defendant’s divorce lawyer could not be a conspirator in a civil action alleging email interception. Garback v. Lossing, 2010 WL 3733971 (E.D.Mich. September 20, 2010) Plaintiff sued his ex-wife’s attorney for violation of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act...

Downloading a song is not a performance under the Copyright Act

Posted on September 29, 2010
“Performance” under Copyright Act requires “contemporaneous perceptibility”. U.S. v. ASCAP, — F.3d —, No. 09-539 (2d Cir. September 28, 2010). Yahoo and RealNetworks commenced a proceeding to determine the rate of a “blanket license” they would pay to ASCAP to perform musical works over the internet (e...

Lack of unauthorized access kills Computer Fraud and Abuse Act claim

Posted on September 28, 2010
Oce North America, Inc. v. MCS Services, Inc., No. 10-984, 2010 WL 3703277 (D.Md. September 16, 2010) Plaintiff makes sophisticated commercial grade printers. It also produces complex software that is used to diagnose problems with the printers and to set the functionality of the machines...

Doctor?s wiretapping case under ECPA heads to trial

Posted on September 27, 2010
McCann v. Iroquois Memorial Hospital, No. 08-3420 (7th Cir. September 13, 2010) Mystery of how doctor’s dictation machine got turned on to record conversation between doctor and hospital employee is a question for the jury and should not have been decided on summary judgment...

Court: privacy on social networking sites is wishful thinking

Posted on September 25, 2010
Defendant is permitted access to plaintiff’s social networking accounts as part of discovery in personal injury case. Romano v. Steelcase Inc., — N.Y.S.2d —, 2010 WL 3703242 (N.Y.Sup. September 21, 2010) Plaintiff sued defendant for personal injury that allegedly caused her to lose her enjoyment of life...

Lack of knowledge of interception causes ECPA claims against website owners to fail

Posted on September 23, 2010
Zinna v. Cook, No. 06-1733, 2010 WL 3604386 (D. Colo. September 7, 2010) Plaintiff sued for violation of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) claiming that defendants intercepted his email messages and posted them to a website called ColoradoWackoExposed...

Domain name owner gets swift relief against impostor website

Posted on September 21, 2010
Starcom Mediavest Group v. Mediavestw.com, No. 10-4025, 2010 WL 3564845 (September 13, 2010) In rem actions over domain names are powerful tools. A trademark owner can undertake these actions when it identifies an infringing domain name but cannot locate the owner of that domain name...

YouTube video maker who threatened judge must stay jailed awaiting trial

Posted on September 21, 2010
U.S. v. Jeffries, No. 10-CR-100, 2010 WL 3619946 (E.D. Tenn. September 13, 2010) Defendant created and posted a video to YouTube in which he allegedly sang a song that threatened to bomb the car of a judge scheduled to hear his child custody case. Though he did not mention the judge by name, he said [...

Plaintiff failed to show that Facebook pics supported hostile workplace claim

Posted on September 20, 2010
Jabbar v. Travel Services, Inc., 2010 WL 3563112, (D.Puerto Rico September 10, 2010) Plaintiff sued her former employer for racial discrimination. The court granted summary judgment in favor of the employer, finding there was not enough evidence to go to trial on plaintiff’s claim...

Ohio record pirating statute preempted by Copyright Act

Posted on September 18, 2010
State v. Boyd, 2010 WL 3565414 (Ohio App. 1 Dist. September 15, 2010) Defendant was convicted under Ohio state criminal law for selling pirated DVD movies on a street corner. This apparently was the first ever prosecution under a law — a “record pirating statute” — enacted in 1976 (which was two years before the [...

Juror internet research again causes criminal conviction to be overturned

Posted on September 17, 2010
Convicted child molester’s conviction vacated because juror read articles about victim’s alleged injuries. Lockwood v. State, 2010 WL 3529416 (Nev., September 3, 2010) Defendant was convicted on multiple counts of the heinous crime of sexual assault of a child under the age of sixteen...

Setting up Outlook rule to intercept another?s email can be a federal crime

Posted on September 16, 2010
U.S. v. Szymuszkiewicz, — F.3d —, 2010 WL 3503506 (7th Cir. September 9, 2010) Seventh Circuit upholds conviction of employee who secretly intercepted his boss’s email. A federal jury convicted the defendant, who was an IRS revenue officer, of violating the Wiretap Act (or the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, as some like to call it [...

Internet transactions support exercise of personal jurisdiction over out of state cigarette seller

Posted on September 15, 2010
Image via Wikipedia Illinois v. Hemi Group LLC, — F.3d —, 2010 WL 3547647 (7th Cir. September 14, 2010) Seventh Circuit declines once again to adopt the Zippo test for personal jurisdiction in internet cases. The State of Illinois filed a civil suit in federal court in Illinois against a New Mexico-based online cigarette seller...

Court orders anonymous accused Bittorrent defendants to be identified

Posted on September 14, 2010
West Bay One v. Does 1 ? 1,653, — F.Supp.2d. —, 2010 WL 3522265 (D.D.C. September 10, 2010) Achte/Neunte Boll Kino Beteiligungs v. Does 1 ? 4,577, — F.Supp.2d —, 2010 WL 3522256 (D.D.C. September 10, 2010) In mass copyright infringement cases against alleged traders of copyrighted movies via Bittorrent, unknown defendants had no reasonable [...

Remembering

Posted on September 11, 2010

Vernor v. Autodesk: does it matter in an age of cloud computing?

Posted on September 11, 2010
Today the Ninth Circuit issued an opinion in the case of Vernor v. Autodesk [PDF], making an important ruling about copyright, software and the first sale doctrine. At a fundamental level, however, one could wonder whether the case is all that big a deal, since the first sale doctrine concerns rights that the owner of [...

Yelp successful in defamation and deceptive acts and practices case

Posted on September 09, 2010
Reit v. Yelp, Inc., — N.Y.S.2d —, 2010 WL 3490167 (September 2, 2010) Section 230 of Communications Decency Act shielded site as interactive computer service; assertions regarding manipulation of reviews was not consumer oriented and therefore not actionable...

iPhone using juror causes manslaugher conviction to be overturned

Posted on September 08, 2010
Tapanes v. State, — So.3d —, 2010 WL 3488709 (Fla.App. 4 Dist. September 8, 2010) [Opinion (PDF)] Defendant was accused of killing his new neighbor and was indicted for murder. The jury convicted him of the lesser charge of manslaughter. One of the key concepts in the case, and mentioned specifically in the jury instructions, [...

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