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
Telephone solicitations from non-profit organizations need not follow the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) guidelines but only if the calls are made by in-house staff, the Fourth Circuit has ruled. The FTC lacks jurisdiction over non-profit organizations. That’s why in 1994 when the Telemarketing Consumer Fraud and Abuse Prevention Act’s rules went into effect, non-profits were […]
Balough
December 12, 2013
Spam from a mortgage company sent to a cell phone is a violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (TCPA), the Arizona Court of Appeals found. Rodney L. Joffee received a text message on his cell phone from Acacia Mortgage Corporation advertising low home mortgage rates. He sued Acacia arguing that the message […]
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
Let there be no confusion but that the “smoky-bar theory of confusion” is nothing but smoke, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has found. Not only that, but for guitar shapes, you can also forget about initial interest confusion. Gibson Guitar Corp. sued Paul Reed Smith (PRS) Guitars for trademark violation for its design of […]
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 […]
Balough
December 12, 2013
Blizzard Entertainment has frozen bnetd.org out of the Internet game war. The Eighth Circuit has affirmed a trial court decision that several programmers and the hosting site Internet Gateway violated both the terms of use agreement and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)’s anti-trafficking provisions. Blizzard Entertainment owns the copyright for several games including “StarCraft,” […]
Balough
December 11, 2013
A website with a similar domain name as Jerry Falwell that criticized the evangelist does not violate either the Lanham Act or the Anti-cybersquatting act, the Fourth Circuit has found. Jerry Falwell successfully obtained an injunction against the website www.fallwell.com under both the Lanham Act and the Consumers Protection and Anti-Cybersquatting Act. The site was […]
Balough
December 9, 2013
White buffalos cannot roam with Texas Longhorns, at least on the University’s email system. The Fifth Circuit upheld a decision denying an injunction to White Buffalo Ventures that sought to send commercial emails to University of Texas students. White Buffalo argues that the university could not block the emails because the action was contrary to […]
Balough
December 7, 2013
In the courts’ continuing struggle with email, the First Circuit has ruled that the federal Wiretap Act does prohibit viewing emails that are in temporary storage before they are delivered. Court have been struggling over whether “intercept” under the Wiretap Act, 18 U.S.C. Sec. 801-804, makes illegal the reading of emails in temporary storage as […]
