Will Europe save America this time?
Ron ColemanEurope just might save Americans' free speech and effectively our democracy by its willingness to act against Facebook
Keyword advertising law à la française
Google wins! LVMH wins! Only it’s the same case. And they’re on opposite sides. Is this as Euro-law thing? Something particularly Frankish? No, it’s an Internet law thing. A 21st-century…
There’s a first time for everything
Jeremy Phillips reports on some “thought I’d seen it all” hijinx from the renowned European Court of F’rinstance: Although e is generally reluctant to criticise individual IP rights owners for…
An emphatic NO!
Chatty Kathy: German designer Wolfgang Joop’s bid to have a punctuation mark trademarked for his Joop! clothing and perfume company has been denied by European Union judges. Joop applied to…
Key decision
“Google makes money not by reason of the nature of the keyword, but by someone clicking on the keyword,” Google lawyer Alexandra Neri told a 15-judge panel of the European…
Very popular in France
Mike Masnick: Google is being fined hundreds of thousands of euros for allowing certain trademarked words to have advertisements run against them. It’s hard to see how this makes any…
Best of 2008: “The Color Purple” (April)
This was first posted on April 14, 2008. Cadbury is purple in the face over not being able to secure the wordlwide exclusive rights to the use of the color…
Fake this book
Facebook is looking over its shoulder at the competition, and doing what comes naturally for succesful businesses based on a model, if not a technology, fundamentally simple to replicate: Suing…
The color purple
Cadbury is purple in the face over not being able to secure the wordlwide exclusive rights to the use of the color purple in association with the sale of chocolate…
Ban that man!
Ron ColemanLondon’s Times: People who illegally download films and music will be cut off from the internet under new legislative proposals to be unveiled next week.Internet service providers (ISPs) will be…
EU privacy fetish protects file-sharers
No one really likes the record companies anyway: European Union countries can refuse to disclose names of file sharers on the Internet in civil cases, the EU’s top court said…
Decline and Fall
Counterfeit Chic reports on yet another indignity visited on the famous girl singer who is presently popular culture’s most pathetic public death spiral: a European sanction for generating and displaying…
European trademark law swinging from vines
Unlike in the good old U.S. of A., Tarzan’s yell doesn’t cut it in Europe — at least not as a trademark: Tarzan’s distinctive yell cannot be registered as a…
But, of course
Ron ColemanShoes are dropping all over Europe: L’Oreal, the world’s largest cosmetics group, has launched legal action against eBay, alleging the online auctioneer does not do enough to combat the sale…