October 8th 2009
Online Marketers Who Collect Visitor Data Are Potential Targets of Regulation in 2010. Law and health care practices are required to protect personally identifiable information (PII). However, in many cases they are encouraged to circulate so-called anonymous data. It turns out the distinction between the anonymous and the personally identifiable isn’t all that real. Latanya […]
August 27th 2009
What’s in the water in St. Charles County? You’ll recall that’s where Lori Drew was was indicted in a cyber bullying case related to the November 2006 suicide of teenager Megan Meier. The case, publicity and resulting legal responses have been a frequent topic here. Now, another grown-up is facing felony harassment charges for allegedly […]
August 24th 2009
Twitter’s laissez-faire approach to trademark enforcement may prove to be a liability after all. Numerous firms have set up services using the Twitter mark: Twitterific, Tiny Twitter, Twitterberry, MadTwitter, TwitterFone, Twitterholic, Twitter Karma, TwitterBuzz, Twitterdex, Twitterlocal, TwitterPoster, TwitterCounter. There’s no sign that Twitter has defended against such use. Even their API agreement fails to lay […]
August 20th 2009
Adam Thierer and Berin Szoka at the Tech Liberation Front have outlined a first draft defining what it is to be a cyber-libertarian: Cyber-libertarians believe true “Internet freedom” is freedom from state action; not freedom for the State to reorder our affairs to supposedly make certain people or groups better off or to improve some […]
August 15th 2009
Eric Goldman at the Technology & Marketing Law blog recounts a hysterically misguided ruling in Colorado, which holds a hospital liable for trademark and copyright infringement because they mention the ranking they received from a health quality website. You can’t copyright a number Imagine enjoining rock bands from saying Billboard ranked them #1, because that […]
August 14th 2009
We love and hate the Blackberries and iPhones that tether us to the world of work. I remember having just started my first lead-gen campaign, and receiving an auto-update of new business while riding a chair lift. Having grown up around farms, I’m comfortable with work and life having lots of overlap. That said, the […]
August 12th 2009
U.S. District Court Judge Leonard Davis has issued a permanent injunction that “prohibits Microsoft from selling or importing to the United States any Microsoft Word products that have the capability of opening .XML, .DOCX or DOCM files (XML files) containing custom XML.” View details. In May, a federal jury in Tyler, Texas, ruled that the […]
August 10th 2009
A 50-person law firm with a national practice in asbestos litigation found that the text of its Elder Law website was copied verbatim as the basis for a new site for a firm in another part of the state. The plaintiff firm, Brayton Purcell, filed suit claiming copyright infringement, false advertising, unfair competition and misappropriation. […]
July 27th 2009
The Times of London has published serialized extracts of Richard Susskind’s forthcoming book, The End of Lawyers? His thesis is that legal practice hasn’t changed as quickly as business, and he suggests that big law firms are where metropolitan newspapers were a generation ago. I know quite a few “recovering lawyers” or “lawyers in denial.” They […]
July 15th 2009
In a ruling that could cause shockwaves throughout the online legal community, a federal judge in Seattle has held that IP addresses are not personally identifiable information. According to U.S. District Court Judge Richard Jones: “In order for ‘personally identifiable information’ to be personally identifiable, it must identify a person. But an IP address identifies […]
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