by Paul Alan Levy This morning I attended a hearing at the D.C. Board of Zoning Adjustment in a case relating to a neighborhood issue in which I have been engaged – an appeal by our local Advisory Neighborhood Commission of the issuance of a building permit that allows Bogdan Builders to “pop-up” a row […]
Author Archives: Paul Levy
by Paul Alan Levy In a decision issued today, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit sitting en banc overruled a 1981 ruling by the U.S. Court of Customs and Patent Appeals and held that the portion of section 2(a) of the Lanham Act that forbids the Trademark Office from registering disparaging trademarks is […]
by Paul Alan Levy The Internet of Things and the world of smart devices has been heralded by industry giants like Philips for the conveniences that it provides for consumers, while allowing companies the “freedom to innovate,” but privacy advocates have long warned about the capabilities that such systems have to invade consumer privacy. But […]
by Paul Alan Levy Last month I criticized a Butte, Montana newspaper which, having decided to switch on January 1, 2016, from a commenting system that allowed users to choose pseudonyms to one that will demand the publishing of real names, announced that the “real names” of those who had previously commented using pseudonyms would […]
Since I published yesterday’s discussion of the Montana Standard’s retroactive elimination of anonymous commenting on its web site, there have been three informative developments. First, I was able to speak with the Standard’s editor, David McCumber, mostly off the record so that we could talk through some of the issues in a collegial mannner; second, […]
by Paul Alan Levy Over at Internet Daily’s Policy Blog, Wendy Davis brings us news that the Montana Standard, the daily paper in Butte Montana, is retroactively changing its policy for the posting of online comments to stories on its web site. The current policy, which will apparently continue in effect until January 1, allows […]
by Paul Alan Levy On the eve of a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on the Senate version of the Issa-Swalwell bill, (the latter is endorsed by Public Citizen) that would ban non-disparagement clauses in consumer contracts, the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida has become the first federal court to recognize […]
by Paul Alan Levy The Washington Post reports this morning that Yelp has begun, on an experimental basis, to show a warning sign when a restaurant has been visited by local inspectors and received an especially low food safety score.
by Paul Alan Levy New Jersey resident Nadiya Oliver was deeply frustrated by her experience with an Illinois company called Fertility Bridges, which sells services connecting couples that are unable to conceive a child on their own with women who are ready to donate their eggs in return for financial assistance with the resulting burdens. […]
by Paul Alan Levy Earlier this year, I discussed a troubling decision from the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that reinstated a complaint by Multi-Time Machine, a maker of fancy watches, based on the way in which Amazon’s internal search engine returned results when users entered the search string “mtm special […]