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Fake Consumer Reviews

On the consumer protection front, the FTC settled charges that a public relations agency engaged in deceptive advertising “by having employees pose as ordinary consumers posting game reviews at the online iTunes store, and not disclosing that the reviews came from paid employees working on behalf of the developers. This activity was in violation of the FTC's Revised Endorsement Guidelines which require disclosure. The PR firm, Reverb Communications, is required to take down the fraudulent postings and bars them from making similar postings in the future without appropriate disclosures.

Press release: http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2010/08/reverb.shtm

Links to Complaint and Consent Order: http://www.ftc.gov/os/caselist/0923199/index.shtm

Information on the FTC's Revised Endorsement Guidelines (16 CFR Part 255): http://ftc.gov/multimedia/video/business/endorsement-guides.shtm

Google and Privacy

A video cartoon featuring Google's chief giving away ice-cream to snoop on children aired on a giant screen in Times Square today as a privacy group continued to hound the internet giant.

Consumer Watchdog took its gripes with Google to the centre of Manhattan, where it paid to have a "Don't be evil?" animated clip shown on a "Jumbotron" screen above the masses coursing through Times Square.

Full story


Changes to Laws In Australia involving licensing software to consumers

Have a look at the Mallesons blog.

Who does this affect?

The new laws raise issues for all software licences with Australian end-customers where either:

  • the software is "of a kind ordinarily acquired for personal, domestic or household use or consumption"; or
  • the amount paid or payable for the software is $A40,000 or less.

Those end-customers are taken to be "consumers" by the ACL, even if they are multinational corporations or government entities well-equipped to negotiate to protect their interests.

Software Licensing

Is the software installed on your computer something you own -- or did you simply buy a "license" to use it? That's the issue at the heart of Vernor v. Autodesk Inc., a case argued Monday before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that represents a broad challenge to the software industry's fundamental business model.

U.S. Patent Office Guidelines for patentable subject matter

See article at this U.S. law firm website.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) published Interim Guidance on 27 July 2010, for evaluating method claims for subject-matter eligibility under § 101 of the Patent Act. This guidance follows the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Bilski v. Kappos.

Manifesto on internet policy and regulation

The IIA recently launched its "manifesto on internet policy and regulation, with principles and recommendations to guide decision making".


A PDF copy of the guide is available at

http://iia.net.au/images/resources/pdf/manifesto-2010.pdf


"We'll be requesting political parties to respond to its recommendations over the coming weeks," IIA chief executive, Peter Coroneos, said.


"It asks the question, under what circumstances can the Internet in Australia be advanced or hobbled by politicians today."


The report argues that the speed of technological change

outstrips the ability of legislation and legislators to keep up.


"Should or can they, regulate the internet to tackle social

policy challenges arising in the wake of rapid technological

change without damaging our capacity to innovate and compete?

If laws are passed, can they be enforced?


Is technology to blame or are we really dealing with age old

human problems that neither laws nor technology can regulate?


These are questions implicit in this document," Coroneos said.


The document offers a reality check to the internet policy debate by urging a return to first principles such as where Australia stands against our western counterparts. It argues we tend to over-regulated in content matters for often symbolic political reasons.


"We lack a local research base to support proposals notably in areas of cyber crime and cyber safety," he said.



Last Class

The last class is Monday night, 31 May.
The class will go for about an hour, then we may go for a drink/pizza etc.
In this class, I can answer any questions that you may have.
We will also discuss legal issues concerning eBay and (if time) Facebook.
Please read:

eBay - reimbursement re bankruptcy of seller

Have a look at:
in light of

Facebook, MySpace, Yahoo

Facebook, MySpace Messages Are Protected: Judge

A district judge has reversed a magistrate judge's ruling that fashion house Christian Audigier Inc. can subpoena the Facebook Inc. and MySpace Inc. communications of an artist who sued the designer for copyright infringement, finding that messages on the social networking sites are protected information.

Yahoo, Facebook Back Google In YouTube IP Case

Facebook Inc., eBay Inc., IAC/InterActiveCorp and Yahoo Inc. have urged a federal judge to rule against Viacom International Inc. in its copyright lawsuit against Google Inc. over video-sharing website YouTube Inc., arguing that a victory for Viacom in the case would hurt online commerce.


Communications Law to be Reviewed

Two top Democratic legislators said Monday that they would begin a process to modernize telecommunications laws that were last overhauled in 1996 but barely mention the Internet.

Break Up Google?


Google is the “arbiter of every single thing on the Web, and it favors its properties over everyone else’s,” said Mr. Reback, sitting in a Washington cafe with the couple. “What it wants to do is control Internet traffic. Anything that undermines its ability to do that is threatening.”

See NY Times for full story.

ISP Liaibility

The main reading for the class on Monday, 24 May is the iiNet case:

Privacy - Proposed New Law in U.S.A.

U.S. Representatives Rick Boucher (VA-09), Chairman of the Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet, and Cliff Stearns, Ranking Member of the Subcommittee, released a discussion draft of legislation to assure the privacy of information about individuals both on the Internet and offline.

Google Says It Collected Private Data by Mistake


"Google said on Friday that for more than three years it had inadvertently collected snippets of private information that people send over unencrypted wireless networks. The admission, made in an official blog post by Alan Eustace, Google’s engineering chief, comes a month after regulators in Europe started asking the search giant pointed questions about Street View, the layer of real-world photographs accessible from Google Maps. Regulators wanted to know what data Google collected as its camera-laden cars methodically trolled through neighborhoods, and what Google did with that data."
Full story in NYTimes

Copyright class

This lecture will give a brief overview of copyright law generally. For some background, see:

Berne Convention
Australian Copyright Council
Copyright Act

There have been a number of interesting Australian cases dealing with copyright infringement, see for example:

Kazaa
MP3s4free
Stevens v Sony

The iiNet case will be discussed in detail in the Liability of ISPs lecture.

We will also discuss how other countries treat piracy:

US - Digital Millenium Copyright Act, and the case of Napster
UK - Ditigal Economy Bill, and the recent case of Newzbin

Google v. Groggle

See this article, including an audio interview.


Google Keywords

"There is no stopping Google selling trademark terms as keywords. That is the message from the US courts this week. A judge from the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia has dismissed Rosetta Stone's case against the search giant, effectively killing off once and for all the conventional method of attacking the AdWords programme.

Rescuecom had already dropped its case against Google (in order to fight a suit on exactly the same issue but where it is the defendant). But the fact that a court has now dismissed this type of case is very surprising, as it shows that they cannot even get to court anymore. The message is that mark owners will be wasting their time suing Google for trademark infringement. The Court of Justice of the European Union recently said the same thing, although it left the door open for mark owners to sue those third-party advertisers that purchase competitors' trademark terms as keywords.

While the Best Buy v Rescuecom case will be tried from this particular angle, it appears that Google is off the hook. Users of the AdWords programme may sue each other, but the view of one US court at least is that there's no point suing Google. If trademark counsel want to stop the sale of their trademark terms to their competitors, they need to switch tactics. Fast."

Source: World Trademark Review


iCyte

In a previous post, I mentioned iCyte as a research tool. Here is an article in the Wall Street Journal about iCyte.

Domain name disputes and cyberquatting

Domain name disputes and cyberquatting

What are the common elements of domain name dispute resolution process?

For a good overview of the Uniform Dispute Resolution Process (UDRP), and the factors relevant to each element, see the WIPO website.

The Australian Dispute Resolution Process for domain names (managed by auDA), can be found here.

What are the differences between these two policies.

We will be discussing some of the following cases, which would be good to review before class:

brisbane.com

q1resort.com

"sucks" cases - red bull and bakersdelightlies

personal names

Who should win in this case?

We will also discuss the proposal for new top level domains.

Online Contracting

This week we will cover the two related issues of online contracting and legal issues which arise when creating a website.

Online contracting

How do you determine when an electronic communication is sent/received? What are the possibilities?

Electronic Transactions Act - Queensland / Commonwealth
Vienna Convention on the Sale of Goods (incorporated into Australia law)

Guidelines for operating websites

Australian Treasury Guidelines for e-commerce


Terms of use

What are the common clauses / differences between these Terms of Use?


Clickwrap / Shrinkwrap agreements

Sample

What is the difference between a clickwrap and a shrinkwrap license?

What can you do to try and make a clickwrap agreement enforceable?

How will unfair terms legislation affect these agreements?


List of cases


Enforcing Click Wrap Agreements


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.



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


How should damages be assessed for privacy and cybersecurity breaches

Listen to this podcast where I discuss how damages should be assessed in privacy and cybersecurity lawsuits. The Lawyers Weekly Show host J...