by Paul Alan Levy In Hassell v. Bird, the California Supreme Court held this morning, by a narrow margin of four votes to three, that section 230 of the Communications Decency Act protects Yelp against an injunction compelling it to comply with an injunction that had previously been issued against a Yelp user who had […]
Author Archives: Paul Levy
by Paul Alan Levy Last year, oral argument was held in the Ninth Circuit on the appeal filed by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, purportedly representing a monkey suing to assert its copyright in a photo that it supposedly deliberately took of itself by causing the operation of a camera. The trial court […]
by Paul Alan Levy Despite the passage of the Consumer Review Fairness Act in December 2016, businesses continue to use non-disclosure and non-disparagement clauses in form contracts to suppress criticism of their products and services. This blog post summarizes several situations in which we have been involved recently. Premier Pools and Spas in Dallas The […]
Kevin Brasler of Washington Consumer Checkbook has an interesting column in last week’s Washington Post detailing the findings of a study of consistently deceptive advertising of ”big ticket items” that are supposedly on sale, even though the supposed regular price was never applicable during the ten month period of the study. The complete study is […]
The New York Times carried a story this weekend about a disturbing lawsuit that will be argued in the California Court of Appeal later this month. Olivia de Havilland sued FX for running the docudrama “Feud,” a fictionalized account of the feud between Joan Crawford and Bette Davis; a character portraying deHavilland has a modest […]
by Paul Alan Levy The current controversy stirred by broad popular revulsion over the Superbowl ad run by Dodge Ram, which included a voice-over excerpted from a speech by Martin Luther King Jr., thus using it to sell a truck, ignores a dirty little secret all-to-well known among those of us who worry about the […]
by Paul Alan Levy In the past few days there have been a couple of significant developments in the area of ”fake litigation” directed at consumer commentary – the use of fraudulent litigation techniques to obtain judicial relief against consumer criticisms of businesses without giving fair notice to the critic, and often using methods calculated […]
The Times carries this report of the role played by identity theft in the problem of commercial bots on Twitter. The victims of the identity theft might well have right of publicity claims given the commercial purpose of the identity theft, and it strikes me that Twitter has potential exposure to those claims, considering that, […]
by Paul Alan Levy Consumer groups, bloggers and others would do well to look through the Berkman Center's new "Cyberlaw Guide to Protest Art," a handy guide to assessing copyright and other IP risks associated with using content that might provoke threats of infringement litigation.
by Paul Alan Levy Muhammad Ali's estate has sued Fox for running a promotion for its Superbowl broadcast that contrasted Ali''s greatness with the greatness of various football players. Originally filed in the Northern District of Illinois, the complaint alleged claims under both the Lanham Act and the Illinois right of publicity. It is hard […]