Frederic Eshelman, a pharmaceutical magnate, resents being criticized by an anonymous gmail user who called him a “piece of shit” and urged companies to stop collaborating with Eshelman for, among other things, “abusing police resources” when he used his political influence to secure the arrest and prosecution of hunters who “corner-crossed” his hunting reserve to […]
Category Archives: Free Speech, Intellectual Property, & the Internet
Today’s Supreme Court decision in Jack Daniel’s v. VIP Products reverses the appellate decision below in a way that minimizes the possible damage to free speech interests that impelled Public Citizen and others to file amicus briefs in the case. It confines the decision to the narrow issue on which certiorari was granted, rather than […]
A number of my first few tilts against the abusive copyright enforcement practices pursued by Mathew Higbee and Associates involved, in part, the issue whether the posting of an inline deep-link to a copyrighted photograph constitutes copyright infringement. Higbee insisted that the Ninth Circuit’s invocation of the “server test” to hold that such displays are […]
Earlier this year, I confronted Daniel DeSouza over his law firm’s demand for a “settlement” of $30,000 based on the claim that Asheville acupuncturist James Whittle had infringed the copyright of Prepared Food Photos by posting a colorful image of fruits and vegetables taken by its corporate predecessor Adlife Marketing and Communications. My response explained […]
In the course of ruling that the New York Times and its reporters could not be sued for persuading Mary Trump to disclose tax returns that had been disclosed in previously litigation, and which her lawyers had been keeping subject to a nondisclosure clause that formed part of the settlement agreement in that litigation, a […]
Forty-six states, D.C., and Guam sued Facebook for violating antitrust laws based on its acquisitions of several competitors, and restrictions on developers of apps that linked to Facebook. The district court dismissed the action, and the D.C. Circuit today unanimously affirmed. In so doing, the court held that the doctrine of laches does apply to […]
A trial judge in Cleveland has rejected a motion for discovery to identify the authors of various comments criticizing the police chief in Beachwood, a Cleveland suburb. (With the help of Cleveland lawyer Tom Haren, we filed an amicus brief in the case) The court adopted what it described as a modified version of the […]
In recent years, major media organizations have been lobbying Congress to enact legislation, the “Journalism Competition and Preservation Act,” requiring search engine providers to engage in a form of collective bargaining about the tax they would pay to media publishers for the privilege of providing links to their news articles, backed up by mandatory interest […]
It was almost twenty years ago that Barbra Streisand filed a lawsuit that attempted to block access to a photograph of her oceanfront estate, bringing unwanted attention to the photo and leading to her being enshrined by Techdirt’s Mike Masnick in tech/legal terminology as the progenitor of “the Streisand Effect.” Now we have Cooley v. […]
The City of Seattle passed the Fair Chance Housing Ordinance, which prohibits landlords from (1) inquiring about the criminal history of current or potential tenants and (2) from taking adverse action based on that criminal history. In a split decision yesterday, the Ninth Circuit found the “inquiry” provision unconstitutional under the First Amendment, but upheld […]