Balough
December 14, 2013
While teachers do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their classrooms under federal law, school districts in Illinois cannot audio tape what teachers say in the classrooms, an Illinois appellate court found. The Board of Education for Freeport School District No. 145 sought to audio and videotape teachers in two special education classrooms […]
Balough
December 14, 2013
There are no ands, ifs, or butts. The North Face Apparel Corp. wants to protect its trademark. The owner of the registered trademark for The North Face that sells outdoor adventure equipment and apparel has sued The South Butt LLC for trademark infringement and unfair competition. The South Butt manufactures and sells jackets and T-shirts and […]
Balough
December 14, 2013
A&T, Inc. can have “personal privacy” as a corporation, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals found. The court found that when the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) exempts from disclosure records for law enforcement purposes that “could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy,” corporations were meant to be included. AT&T […]
Balough
December 14, 2013
Sears’ current tagline “Where Shopping Revolves Around You 24/7” might be better phrased as “Where We Spy On You 24/7.” Under a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) consent order, Sears Holdings Management Corporation (SHMC), owned by Sears, Roebuck and Company and Kmart Management Corporation, agreed that it failed to adequately disclose that a computer tracking program […]
Balough
December 14, 2013
It is not a copyright violation for a plagiarism detection website to keep a copy of a student’s paper in its data base to use to check other students’ papers. The case arose when high school students were required to submit their papers to iParadigms, an online service that compares the students’ papers to other […]
Balough
December 14, 2013
It’s hard to keep a trade secret in a small town, especially if the secret is a customer list for providing computer networking service. An Illinois appellate court reversed the trial court’s finding that an existing and potential customer list was a trade secret. The court also dissolved an injunction that prevented former employees from […]
Balough
December 14, 2013
Florida has joined a minority of states in rejecting a privacy cause of action for false light. The Florida Supreme Court found that the tort of “false light is largely duplicative of existing torts, but without the attendant protections of the First Amendment.” The tort of false light invasion of privacy concerns publicizing a matter […]
Balough
December 14, 2013
Hiding a competitor’s trademark in metatags and printing them with white ink on the website constitutes “willful” trademark infringement under the Lanham Act. McGills Glass Warehouse is an internet-based retailer of stained-glass supplies. It embedded the registered trademarks “Venture Tape” and “Venture Foil” in its website metatags and on the pages by “printing” them in […]
Balough
December 14, 2013
Author J. K. Rowling has stopped the publication by RDR Books (and attributed author Steven Vander Ark) of a proposed lexicon of the fictional character Harry Potter, his spells, and his world. A New York District Court found that the content of the lexicon used too much of the actual language in Ms. Rowling’s books […]
Balough
December 14, 2013
The owner of free open source software can bring an action for copyright infringement when a party using the software does not abide by the conditions of the license, the Federal Circuit found. Robert Jacobsen developed software and licensed it through an open source license. The license required that any future copying and modification of […]
