Viacom Sues Google/YouTube

Entertainment giant, Viacom (owner of such names as MTV and Nickelodeon) is suing Google for “massive copyright infringement” over the use of copyrighted video material on Google-owned YouTube.com. Viacom is seeking in the region of $1 billion in damages.

In its complaint, Viacom makes some very strong statements, such as

[s]ome entities, rather than taking the lawful path of building businesses that respect intellectual property rights on the Internet, have sought their fortunes by brazenly exploiting the infringing potential of digital technology. YouTube is one such entity.

In the complaint, Viacom also claims that YouTube.com contains over 150,000 video clips of their copyrighed material.

In my opinion, go Viacom!! They are certainly correct in asserting that YouTube.com is infringing the rights of many, many copyright holders and I think this will end up being a landmark case in ensuring that intellectual property rights in digital materials are honored on the Internet. I can't wait to see how the case develops!

You can read more details of Viacom v. YouTube on Findlaw.com.

CAN-SPAM Man in the Can?

For the first time, a jury has just found guilty a defendant to be charged under the anti-spam CAN-SPAM Act (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act) 2003.

The defendant, Jeffrey B. Goodin, of Azusa, CA, was charged after sending out "phishing" emails to subscribers of AOL in which he deceived recipients into disclosing personal financial information which was then used to make unauthorized purchases.

Mr. Goodin will be sentenced in L.A. on June 11th.

Let's hope this is the first of many such convictions!

Technorati Tags: phishing, can-spam, can-spam act

Presidential Authority to Intercept Emails, and More

The Washington Post has published an interesting article today on the federal government's power, or otherwise, to intercept emails and gather other pieces of personal information stored on computers. This article, entitled "The Legal Tangles Of Data Collection" is well worth a read (registration at washingtonpost.com may be required).

E-Discovery and the new Federal Rules

On December 1, 2006, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure were amended to cover new developments in the world of discovery of electronically stored information ("e-discovery").

In order to provide a single source of information on the new e-discovery rules, Findlaw has created an Electronic Discovery home page from which you can access all of their e-discovery information, including an ongoing series of articles on the topic and even subscribe to their e-discovery RSS feed.

Technorati Tags: frcp, federal rules of civil procedure, electronic discovery, e-discovery, ediscovery

Trademarked Keywords Don't Lead to Confused Consumers: J.G. Wentworth SSC Ltd v. Settlement Funding LLC

Another court has ruled in favor of the advertiser in a keyword/trademark violation lawsuit.

In the case, J.G. Wentworth SSC Ltd v. Settlement Funding LLC, No. 06-0597 (E.D. Pa. Jan. 4, 2007) (Opinion in PDF format), the court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania ruled that the defendant's use of the plaintiff's trademarks as keywords for Google AdWords advertisements and in the keywords meta tags of their web sites did not violate the plaintiff's trademark rights. The court dismissed the case because it believed the defendant's use of the trademarks "create[d] no likelihood of confusion as a matter of law."

However, although the court dismissed the case, in its opinion the court did hold that the "defendant’s participation in Google’s AdWords program and defendant’s incorporation of plaintiff’s marks in its keyword meta tags constitute trademark use under the Lanham Act."

In other words, in contrast to some court rulings, this court ruled that using trademarked terms as AdWords and meta-tag keywords meets the "use in commerce" requirment of a trademark violation despite the fact that the defendant's use of the marks was "invisible to potential consumers" and therefore did not actually directly identify any goods or services.

Interestingly, their very invisibility really underpinned the court's rationale for its finding that there was no likelihood of consumer confusion because the trademarks themselves appeared nowhere in the defendant's advertisements and also did not appear on the defendant's web sites. In addition, the court stated the very nature of search engine results precluded such a finding:

Due to the separate and distinct nature of the links created on any of the search results pages in question, potential consumers have no opportunity to confuse defendant’s services, goods, advertisements, links or websites for those of plaintiff.

The court's opinion (PDF) is (mostly) very readable, even for non-lawyers, and thoroughly recommended.

Technorati Tags: trademarks, adwords, keywords, cyberlaw