- Trademark infringement claims as way to silence critics: Jenzabar gets comeuppance in form of court award of more than $500,000 in attorney costs [Paul Alan Levy, earlier and more]
- Court holds Google Books project to be fair use [Matthew Sag]
- Questioning the ITC’s patent jurisdiction: “Why should we have a trade agency litigating patent disputes?” [K. William Watson, Cato, more, yet more, related]
- Courts come down hard on copyright troll Prenda Law [Popehat]
- Annals of patent trollery: New York Times et al rout Helferich [EFF, Liquid Litigation BLLawg] Monolithic Power Systems v. 02 Micros [IP for the Little Guy] Resistance by Newegg, RackSpace, Hyundai, etc. [WLF]
- Re: copyright terms, US government shouldn’t endorse view that longer always means better [Simon Lester, Cato]
- Legal tiff over use of hotel carpet patterns in costumes [Io9]
Posts Tagged ‘Google’
Tech roundup
- Far-reaching, little-discussed new regulation: Stewart Baker on NIST rules mandating cybersecurity at private enterprises [Volokh; first, second, third, fourth posts]
- “Ominous Developments on the Internet Governance Front” [David Post]
- “The Exaggeration Of The Cyberbullying Problem Is Harming Anti-Bullying Efforts” [Tim Cushing, TechDirt]
- “Will California’s New Data Breach Notification Duty Stimulate Class Action Litigation?” [Glenn Lammi, WLF]
- Some thoughts on how the law should treat domestic drones, public and private [Kenneth Anderson]
- Privacy lawsuit against Gmail could do a lot of damage [Mike Masnick, TechDirt; Matt Powers, CEI “Open Market”, parts one, two]
- Warning: more efforts ahead from legal academia to come up with stringent liability schemes for software makers [New Republic and Lawfare]
Did Euro data privacy regs help kill Google Reader?
Many loyal users (including me) were beyond glum when Google decided to close down its venerable RSS reader, effective yesterday. Maxim Lott at Fox News has this report:
“You would think that it would take little effort to maintain the site, but compliance keeps the cost up,” the source [“familiar with the matter”] told FoxNews.com.
He gave one example of a costly regulation.
“In Europe they’ve had a regulation for years where basically, if someone requests that all their data on a site be deleted, the company must comply. Reader wasn’t compliant with that. So it comes down to, do you spend a lot more resources making the service compliant, or working on something new?”…
Google spokeswoman Nadja Blagojevic declined to comment about whether regulatory costs played a role in Reader’s demise.
Medical roundup
- New ACA regulations from the feds restrict employer wellness programs [Jon Hyman; Leslie Francis, Bill of Health]
- Frequent-flyer defense medical examiner comes to grief in New York [Eric Turkewitz]
- Fecal transplants (that’s not a misprint) appear to hold out hope of saving a lot of lives, except for the mountain of FDA paperwork blocking them [Amar Toor/The Verge, Maggie Koerth-Baker] Enter the grey market [Beth Skwarecki]
- Why can’t the FDA catch up with Europe on sunscreens? [Alex Tabarrok]
- “The banning of catastrophic-only plans infuriates me the most…. the only plans that are actually financially sensible for a healthy individual to purchase.” [MargRev comments section]
- More on the recent study of malpractice suits by a group of Johns Hopkins researchers [Christopher Robinette]
- For all his public health pretensions, Michael Bloomberg “has no idea what he’s talking about” on medical marijuana [Jacob Sullum]
- Another look at asylums? [James Panero, City Journal]
- Feds’ war on Google pharma ads reflects no credit on D.C. [Brian Doherty]
Driverless cars: a privacy/surveillance threat?
Randal O’Toole doesn’t share the concerns of Greg Beato and others.
January 6 roundup
- U.S. v. I.E.V.: “Annals of Tremendously Entertaining Alex Kozinski Opinions” [Kyle Graham] Judge Kozinski on video [Above the Law]
- FTC drops Google antitrust probe [Eric Goldman, James Grimmelmann, Geoffrey Manne, earlier here, here]
- Andrew Trask picks 2012’s ten most significant class action cases and interesting class action articles;
- “I’m quite certain no adults need Patrick Kennedy – of all people – dictating what substances they’re allowed to consume.” [Glenn Greenwald]
- U.S. Chamber annual worst-lawsuits list [and DC Examiner editorial] Family of Little League teen sued by spectator hit by ball is grateful for public support [Manchester, N.J. Patch, earlier]
- “Boy, 6, suspended from Silver Spring school for pointing finger like a gun” [WaPo, followup (school reverses), Tim Lynch/Cato] Lenore Skenazy nominates the craziest Free-Range stories of 2012;
- Toyota’s $1.1 B class action pact will encourage future shakedowns [Michael Krauss/PoL, Public Citizen]
Intellectual property roundup
- “The patent, used as a sword” [NY Times, Flowing Data]
- Default judgment over 528 songs against contumacious defendant: “Website ordered to pay $6.6 million for posting song lyrics” [NLJ]
- “Monsanto Seed Patent Case Gets U.S. Supreme Court Review” [Bloomberg Business Week]
- New book tells story of Ira Arnstein, whose frivolous suits against Cole Porter, Irving Berlin et al set important precedent [WSJ]
- “Do it ‘on the Internet,’ get a patent, sue an industry — it still works” [Joe Mullin, Ars Technica]
- “Court rules book scanning is fair use, suggesting Google Books victory” [Timothy Lee, ArsTechnica]
August 15 roundup
- Tenaha, Texas traffic-stop forfeiture scandal: town settles with ACLU [Thampy/Agitator; related, Steven Greenhut]
- A complaint about Progressive Insurance’s posture in an uninsured motorist claim goes viral on the Internet, and Ted Frank supplies a contrarian view [Point of Law and commenters, Consumerist]
- ABA again solicits nominations for its annual collection of top 100 law blogs;
- “Psychiatric staff ‘should have’ prevented the Aurora shootings. Thus Southern Poverty Law Center ‘should have’ prevented Oak Creek. Right?” [George Wallace]
- In Google-Oracle case, judge orders that the litigants disclose which private commentators they have financially backed [Paul Alan Levy and Scott Michelman, CLP; Timothy Lee, Ars Technica; Chris O’Brien, Mercury News]
- Suit based on cop allegations says town of Riverdale Park, Md. issued unlawful camera tickets [The Newspaper, Washington Post]
- Priceless: “Some Problems Inherent In Trying to Sell a Counterfeiting Machine” [Lowering the Bar]
- Maybe drive ’em to polls too? Massachusetts agrees in lawsuit settlement to send dole recipients vote packs [Michael Graham, Boston Herald; Christian Science Monitor]
“Indian court forces Facebook, Google to censor content”
“The Delhi High Court has ordered 21 companies, which have already been asked to develop a mechanism to block objectionable material in India, to present their plans for policing their services in the next 15 days.” A private complaint had charged the internet firms with permitting the dissemination of material offensive to Hindus, Muslims and Christians. [Emil Protalinski, ZDNet]
Free Google Maps unfair to paid competitors, France rules
At Cato at Liberty, I find that uncannily reminiscent of a famous Bastiat parody (& IEA, Tim Worstall).
More from Coyote: “left unsaid is how they would jack up their prices when at least two other companies (Bing, Mapquest) also provide mapping services online for free.” But note that the French case arose not from Google’s furnishing of its free map service to individual end customers, but from its furnishing of its map API to businesses that typically adapt it for use in their own sites; as commenters at BoingBoing and Reddit as well as news reports point out, Google has indeed introduced fees for its largest business users of this type (which has caused some of them to adapt by switching from Google’s API to OpenStreetMap, a free wiki-based map service).