SSRN has named my paper, "Video Software Dealers Association v. Schwarzenegger: A Rising Ninth Circuit Case on the Constitutionality of States' Regulation of Minors' Access to Violent Video Games," to its Top Ten download list for constitutional issues.
The paper was published last year in The Computer and Internet Lawyer.
SSRN (Social Science Research Network) is a leading Web site for academic publications. It was co-founded in 1994 by Harvard Business School Professor Michael Jensen and other distinguished academicians. Today, it is a Top 40 academic research site. It touts more than 193,000 works in its electronic library with new journal affiliations coming online each week.
For more on SSRN from The New York Times, click here.
To see my SSRN Author Page and to view and download my legal publications, click here.
To request more information, please post a comment here.
6.12.2009
Cybersquatting on Social Networks - Register Your Trademarks Today!
In lay person's terms, cybersquatting is the use of a domain name that infringes another's trademark rights.
An example: Company C has federally protected rights (read, a registered federal trademark) in the words "Coca Cola," and Company B abusively registers an Internet domain name, cocacola.net. Here, trademark infringement creates the likelihood that consumers will be confused as to the source of Company C's goods and services. In this example, a consumer may visit the cocacola.net Web site where she or he expects to see information about how to buy Coca-Cola beverages and other products. This confusion harms the federally-protected Coca Cola brand.
There is more to cybersquatting and trademark infringement, of course, but these are the basic ideas behind the federal Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act and trademark protection generally. (Here's a USPTO backgrounder in its Report to Congress on the ACPA.)
Enter Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, and other social networking sites.
A concern has developed where users may be creating social networking profiles with "names" that may cybersquat on others' protected brands.
Facebook just announced on Wednesday (June 10th) that it will begin providing access to vanity URLs tomorrow (June 13th, 12:01am). (This means that a user's Facebook URL can read <http://www.facebook.com/username>, instead of a random number-based URL.) These vanity URLs will be available on a first-come, first-serve basis.
Facebook explains that this new vanity URL service will make it easier to locate FB pages. There is a serious concern, however, that this will open the doors for a flood of trademark infringers and cybersquatters.
To address this concern, FB is giving holders of federally-registered trademarks owners the opportunity to block requests for URL extensions using their marks.
To register your registered mark with FB, take this simple steps NOW before the vanity URL gates open just after midnight tomorrow:
1. Go to http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=username_rights.
2. Complete the simple form. (You'll need your trademark registration number at hand.)
3. You'll receive a submission acknowledgment email from FB.
4. FB will then examine your submission and, if approved, will withhold your mark from the public reservation process that begins tomorrow.
Be ahead of the curve and get your mark registered today.
If you need assistance, email me at ELoza@TechnologyLawGroup.com for Technology Law Group's brand of intellectual property and Internet legal services.
An example: Company C has federally protected rights (read, a registered federal trademark) in the words "Coca Cola," and Company B abusively registers an Internet domain name, cocacola.net. Here, trademark infringement creates the likelihood that consumers will be confused as to the source of Company C's goods and services. In this example, a consumer may visit the cocacola.net Web site where she or he expects to see information about how to buy Coca-Cola beverages and other products. This confusion harms the federally-protected Coca Cola brand.
There is more to cybersquatting and trademark infringement, of course, but these are the basic ideas behind the federal Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act and trademark protection generally. (Here's a USPTO backgrounder in its Report to Congress on the ACPA.)
Enter Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, and other social networking sites.
A concern has developed where users may be creating social networking profiles with "names" that may cybersquat on others' protected brands.
Facebook just announced on Wednesday (June 10th) that it will begin providing access to vanity URLs tomorrow (June 13th, 12:01am). (This means that a user's Facebook URL can read <http://www.facebook.com/username>, instead of a random number-based URL.) These vanity URLs will be available on a first-come, first-serve basis.
Facebook explains that this new vanity URL service will make it easier to locate FB pages. There is a serious concern, however, that this will open the doors for a flood of trademark infringers and cybersquatters.
To address this concern, FB is giving holders of federally-registered trademarks owners the opportunity to block requests for URL extensions using their marks.
To register your registered mark with FB, take this simple steps NOW before the vanity URL gates open just after midnight tomorrow:
1. Go to http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=username_rights.
2. Complete the simple form. (You'll need your trademark registration number at hand.)
3. You'll receive a submission acknowledgment email from FB.
4. FB will then examine your submission and, if approved, will withhold your mark from the public reservation process that begins tomorrow.
Be ahead of the curve and get your mark registered today.
If you need assistance, email me at ELoza@TechnologyLawGroup.com for Technology Law Group's brand of intellectual property and Internet legal services.
6.08.2009
Supreme Court Denies Review of Cyberspace Privacy Case
The United States Supreme Court has declined to take up an appeal in Sodomsky v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
The original challenge brought by Sodomsky sought to suppress evidence of child pornography found on his computer.
Sodomsky had taken his computer to Circuit City to have a DVD burner installed. The technician doing the work encountered the files, including multiple video files, on Sodomsky's computer. The technician reported the matter to the authorities who then sought to prosecute Sodomsky.
On appeal, the Pennsylvania Superior Court reversed the lower court, which had held that the files were inadmissible.
The Court stated, "If a person is aware of, or freely grants to a third party, potential access to his computer contents, he has knowingly exposed the contents of his computer to the public and has lost any reasonable expectation of privacy in those contents." See 939 A.2d 363, 369 (Pa. Super. Ct. 2008) (emphasis supplied).
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court agreed with the Superior Court's decision, and the U.S. Supreme Court has declined to review the ruling.
Click here for today's Associated Press report picked up by the Mercury News and other publications. For the Superior Court's decision, click here, search using "Sodomsky," and see the opinion dated Feb. 8, 2008.
The original challenge brought by Sodomsky sought to suppress evidence of child pornography found on his computer.
Sodomsky had taken his computer to Circuit City to have a DVD burner installed. The technician doing the work encountered the files, including multiple video files, on Sodomsky's computer. The technician reported the matter to the authorities who then sought to prosecute Sodomsky.
On appeal, the Pennsylvania Superior Court reversed the lower court, which had held that the files were inadmissible.
The Court stated, "If a person is aware of, or freely grants to a third party, potential access to his computer contents, he has knowingly exposed the contents of his computer to the public and has lost any reasonable expectation of privacy in those contents." See 939 A.2d 363, 369 (Pa. Super. Ct. 2008) (emphasis supplied).
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court agreed with the Superior Court's decision, and the U.S. Supreme Court has declined to review the ruling.
Click here for today's Associated Press report picked up by the Mercury News and other publications. For the Superior Court's decision, click here, search using "Sodomsky," and see the opinion dated Feb. 8, 2008.
For Internet, intellectual property, and international legal matters and other excellent Technology Law Group services, please contact ELoza@TechnologyLawGroup.com.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
