On May 11, 2022, the Fifth Circuit reinstated Texas state law HB 20 which allows private parties to sue tech platforms with 50M+ MAUs for their censorship of user-generated content based on “the viewpoint of a user or another person”. On May 13, technology lobbying groups NetChoice and the Computer...
As the Wall Street Journal is already reporting, today eBay sustained an important win in its long-running dispute with Tiffany over counterfeit goods sold through its marketplace. (The full opinion is available here.)
I wrote about this case as my leading example of the legal problems that appear at...
I had a long interview this morning with the Christian Science Monitor . Like many of the interviews I’ve had this year, the subject was Google. At the increasingly congested intersection of technology and the law, Google seems to be involved in most of the accidents.
The interview got me thinking...
The German Constitutional Court (GCC) this morning struck down a law that imposed on private telecom operators and service providers such as ISPs and telephone companies comprehensive duties to keep record of all communication data, including Internet activity, e-mails, SMS, MMS etc., for six months...
I don’t usually blog “personal” stories, but this one is irresistible. It raises disturbing questions at the border of digital and physical life, and legal problems of trademark and the emerging issues of cloud computing and data liability.
EBay, as everyone knows, has been struggling to improve...
I write today on CNET (see "Gripes over Google Books go Technical") about the Department of Justice's filing last week in the Google Books case. The Amended Settlement Agreement (ASA), released in November, will be discussed by the parties at a fairness hearing on Feb. 18th.
The DoJ continues to...
I’m starting to feel like the only person who thinks the Google Books settlement with authors and publishers is a good deal. One voice that seems not to be heard, however, over the din of Google competitors, panicky law professors, and regulators who wouldn’t know a workable solution to a copyright...
The long-awaited Amended Settlement Agreement (ASA) was filed yesterday. The relevant documents (including the new version of the settlement and a summery of the main changes) are available here. As someone who was looking into the international law aspects of the settlement recently, one of the...
Pam Samuelson offers some interesting reflections on the Google book search agreement. Her warnings are worth listening to. Prof. Samuelson is quite critical about the agreement and the new creature it contemplates- the Book Rights Registry (BRR).
The BRR is a to-be-formed entity which, among...
Author: Allison Pedrazzi Helfrich
Following an investigation and notification attempts, clothing distributor Louis Vuitton Malletier filed a complaint against several websites that it believed were selling goods that infringed on Vuitton’s copyrights and trademarks, alleging contributory trademark...
Author: Stuart Loh
Universal Music Group (“UMG”) sued Veoh Networks, Inc. (“Veoh”), an Internet-based service that allows users to share videos online, for copyright infringement. In the present proceedings, UMG moved for partial summary judgment that Veoh was not entitled to protection under 17 U.S...