Carl Malamud of public.resource.org has a guest post on Boing Boing: Liberating America’s Secret, for-pay Laws. In it, he discusses the problem of laws that incorporate copyrighted technical standards by reference. Because the standards bodies that issue them are in the private sector, anyone who wants to view the standards…
Justia Law Blog
Watch out, Facebook users. Mark Zuckerberg's social network giant recently modified the company's Statement of Rights and Responsibilities (i.e., Terms of Service ['TOS']) to now allege that Facebook claims trademark rights to the word 'Book.' (Read it below) Oh, and in case you forgot, Facebook also claims intellectual property rights…
An 83-year-old iPhone user sued Apple this week, claiming that she injured herself during prime winter holiday shopping season last December by walking "directly into the clear glass doors" at the company's Manhasset, Long Island Apple retail store in New York. Ouch! Who was at fault here? Plaintiff Evelyn Paswell…
Our Daily Caselaw Summary writers have served up some interesting cases this week: In Colorado, the Supreme Court issued Air Wisconsin Airlines v. Hoeper, which found an airline was not immune from a defamation claim by an employee under the Aviation Transportation Safety Act. In that case, the employee was…
Yahoo! Mail user Albert Rudgayzer sued the Silicon Valley web portal yesterday, charging that Yahoo's revelation of users first and last names when they send email violates the portal's own Terms of Service ('TOS'), constituting a breach of contract. He seeks relief under federal and California state law. Rudgayzer, a…
The DC Circuit released an opinion about vaccine safety this week. In Coal. for Mercury-Free Drugs v. Sebelius, the Court found that plaintiffs did not have standing to sue the FDA for failing to prohibit the use of vaccines containing the mercury-based preservative thimerosal on young children and pregnant women.…
Samsung was hit with a patent infringement lawsuit yesterday over an emoticon patent (see below). Plaintiff Varia Holdings LLC charges that Samsung mobile phones violate its 2007 U.S. Patent (No. 7,167,731) for an "Emoticon Input Method and Apparatus." Varia Holdings took a jab at the electronics giant, charging that "Samsung…
From our friends over at Google Scholar comes word last week of changes to the “Cited by” function within their legal opinions database. For those of you not familiar with this feature, “Cited by” appears as a link under items returned in a result set. For example, the first opinion…
It's like a scene from the Wizard of Oz: Righthaven is almost dead as a corporate entity. Yesterday U.S. District Judge Philip Pro ordered "the transfer of all of Righthaven’s intellectual property and intangible property" — including 278 registered works filed with the U.S. Copyright Office — to court-appointed receiver…
A new federal class action lawsuit (see below) charges that a host of well-known social media, app, and mobile device companies stole "literally billions of contacts" from users' personal address books by illegally 'harvesting' personal data on the sly, without their knowledge or consent. The 152-page complaint seeks monetary damages…