by Paul Alan Levy Yelp appears to be worried enough about the insistent campaign of businesses like Hadeed Carpet Cleaning that have received negative Yelp reviews to tell the press that they get punished for refusing to advertise that it is now including on every page of business reviews this line: "Your trust is our […]
Author Archives: Paul Levy
by Paul Alan Levy Law professor Josh Blackman reports that Aspen Publishers is promoting the next edition of the property law casebook he assigns pursuant to a license scheme apparently intended to undermine the application of the first-sale doctrine to books: students must agree to return the casebook at the end of the class, […]
by Paul Alan Levy Last week the Sixth Circuit held oral argument in Jones v. TheDirty.com, a case where a high school teacher and pro-football cheerleader sued an online web site for hosting comments asserting that she had sex with several football players and speculating about whether she had contracted sexually transmitted diseases. The trial […]
by Paul Alan Levy In a decision issued this morning in Octane Fitness v. Icon Health and Fitness, the Supreme Court held that attorney fee awards in patent cases depend on an assessment of the totality of the circumstances, and that either the substantive weakness of the losing party's litigating position (including both facts and […]
by Paul Alan Levy Over at Techdirt, Tim Cushing points us to a bizzare situation in the Ninth Circuit rule in which the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press was required to file its amicus brief supporting EFF’s position in litigation over National Security Letters under seal. The Reporters Committee’s announcement of its brief […]
by Paul Alan Levy When I was pulling together my recent analysis of Hadeed Carpet Cleaning’s assertion that its negative reviews had appeared on Yelp only after it pulled its advertising from Yelp, I figured that it might be helpful if I ran a cross-check against how Hadeed is portrayed on other web sites that […]
by Paul Alan Levy Following the recent decision of the Virginia Court of Appeals affirming the enforcement of a subpoena to Yelp by Hadeed Carpet Cleaning, demanding the identities of seven anonymous reviewers, and our petition to the Virginia Supreme Court seeking leave to appeal, Hadeed has been trying to organize a broader crusade against […]
by Paul Alan Levy I blogged recently about several of the issues raised by Cindy Lee Garcia's copyright claims against Google, which we addressed in an amicus brief filed well before the amicus due date, specifically to give her the chance to address those issues. I suppose that I should be flattered that Garcia mentions […]
by Paul Alan Levy I have blogged a few times about the libel suit brought by Washington, DC contractor Christopher Dietz against one of his customers, Jane Perez, who posted on Angie’s List and Yelp unfavorable reviews of his work on her newly purchased condo and included an assertion that, after their contractual relationship broke […]
by Paul Alan Levy When I first read Judge Kozinski’s decision for a majority of a panel of the Ninth Circuit, holding that Cindy Lee Garcia, who has received death threats because her role in the movie Innocence of Muslims makes her appear to have cast serious aspersions on the prophet Mohammed, could assert her […]