Balough
December 13, 2013
Google image search engine’s use of thumbnails probably infringes on the owner of the image’s copyright, a U.S. District Court judge found. The court granted a preliminary injunction prohibiting Google from displaying the thumbnail images from Perfect10.com’s website when showing results of an image search. The service in question is Google’s image search that displays […]
Balough
December 13, 2013
An employer who knows or should know that an employee is viewing child pornographic sites on a company computer has an obligation to terminate or to discipline the employee and report the employee to law enforcement authorities. The issue arose in a case where a mother and her minor daughter sued the company where her […]
Balough
December 13, 2013
It is not a fair use under the Copyright Act to “sample” entire songs by downloading them from the Internet before deciding whether to buy an album, the Seventh Circuit has found. Cecilia Gonzalez argued that her downloading over 1,370 copyrighted songs was fair use since she was just sampling music to determine what she […]
Balough
December 13, 2013
Bloggers, the First Amendment and Trade Secrets will be the topic of a presentation by Richard C. Balough at the annual Intellectual Property Law Assn. of Chicago’s Trade Secret Seminar. The seminar will be from 1 to 5 p.m. on December 7, 2005 at the John Marshall Law School. In addition to Mr. Balough, Mark […]
Balough
December 12, 2013
Not surprisingly, spammers continue to harvest email addresses, a new study by the Federal Trade Commission found. However, the good news from the study is that internet service providers’ anti-spam technologies are capable of blocking spam, the report said. The report found that where consumers take a pro-active approach by “masking” their email addresses, the […]
Balough
December 12, 2013
Contrary to its claims, using software purchased for $24.95 won’t give you free, legal access to music, movies and games. Instead using the file-sharing programs to download copyrighted materials is illegal, the Federal Trade Commission alleged in a complaint against MP3DownloadCity.com. Based on the FTC complaint, a U.S. District Court judge in California has issued […]
Balough
December 12, 2013
An anonymous file sharing software may come with an unwanted guest-spyware that slows down your computer and that cannot be easily uninstalled. The Federal Trade Commission has filed a lawsuit to stop Odysseus Marketing and its principal, Walter Rines, from advertising a software program that Odysseus claims allows customers to engage in peer-to-peer file sharing […]
Balough
December 12, 2013
Superior Mortgage Corp. wasn’t so superior in protecting consumers’ information online. The New Jersey company agreed to a consent order with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for alleged violations of the agency’s Standards for Safeguarding Customer Information Rule and security misrepresentations regarding the mortgage lender’s online practices. Superior conducts business through 40 branches in 10 […]
Balough
December 12, 2013
It’s official. Fat Albert does belong to Bill Cosby. In a decision under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy, a one person panel found that the domain name fatalbert.org properly belongs to the comedian, not Sterling Davenport of Loretto TN. Cosby created the Fat Albert character in 1992 as part of his television series. […]
Balough
December 12, 2013
An appellate court has dramatically reduced the punitive damages award against anti-abortionists who maintained the Nuremberg Files website. The Ninth Circuit found that the original award of $108.5 million to doctors named on the site was beyond the constitutional limit and remitted damages to around $5 million. The defendants were found in 1999 to be […]
