The long-anticipated Podcasting Legal Guide is now available. Written by Colette Vogele and Mia Garlick, it lives up to its stated purpose of “[providing] you with a general roadmap of some of the legal issues specific to podcasting.” It is very interesting to see such a well thought out application of traditional legal principles to the brand new and untested issues that arise from podcasting.

What’s more, the PLG has been released under a Creative Commons license. What else would one expect from such forward-thinking authors? I enjoyed meeting Mia at last week’s Blog Law and Blogging for Lawyers Seminar, and have worked with Colette as opposing counsel in a rare matter dealing with podcasting. I assure you, they know what they’re talking about.

Columbia Pictures filed a copyright infringement suit against defendant May in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin. Columbia accused May of operating a server and website that allowed users to download infringing copies of copyrighted motion pictures and television shows for free and without authorization.

Despite numerous opportunities, May never answered Columbia’s complaint, nor contested the entry of default. In awarding damages to Columbia, the court considered “the massive online piracy that May apparently orchestrated, and the harsh effects illegal downloads have on the motion picture industry.” Accordingly, the court concluded that Columbia’s request for $35,000 in statutory damages was a “suitable award.”

In addition, the court enjoined May from “downloading, uploading, and/or otherwise reproducing or distributing [Columbia's] copyrighted works, whether using the BitTorrent network or by any other means.”

Columbia Pictures Indus. v. May, (Slip Op.) 2006 WL 1085120 (E.D.Wis., April 24, 2006).

After seeing what it believed to be defamatory statements about it on Yahoo! Finance and Silicon Investor message boards, plaintiff Matrixx Initiatives, Inc. (”Matrixx”) filed a lawsuit against several “John Doe” defendants. Through information obtained from Yahoo!, Matrixx determined that certain of the alleged defamatory statements were posted with computers owned by Barbary Coast Capital Management. Matrixx took the deposition of one Mr. Worthington, the manager of Barbary Coast, asking him to identify the anonymous Internet users who posted the alleged defamatory statements. Worthington refused.

Matrixx filed a motion to compel Worthington to answer the questions, and the trial court granted the motion. Worthington and Barbary Coast sought review, arguing that the posters’ First Amendment right to speak anonymously should prohibit the disclosure of their identities. On appeal, the court affirmed the decision of the lower court, holding that Worthington and Barbary Coast did not have standing to invoke the anonymous posters’ First Amendment rights.

In reaching its decision, the court distinguished two other cases in which the recipient of a subpoena did have standing to challenge the unmasking of another person. In the cases of In re Subpoena Duces Tecum to America Online, Inc., 2000 WL 1210372 (Va. App. 2000), and In re Verizon Internet Services, 257 F.Supp.2d 244 (D.D.C. 2003)(both cases reversed on other grounds), Internet service providers did not have to identify anonymous customers pursuant to subpoenas served on the ISPs. In each of these cases, the courts held that the ISPs had standing to assert the customers’ rights to remain anonymous, because the customer relationships were sufficiently close. In this case, however, the court held that “by contrast, we are presented with no ‘close relationship’ — or, indeed, any relationship — between appellants and the individuals for whom they are seeking First Amendment protection.”

Matrixx Initiatives, Inc. v. Doe, — Cal.Rptr.3d —, 2006 WL 999933 (Cal.App. 6 Dist, April 18, 2006).

Decision confirms that illegal P2P users can expect to get sued many miles from home.

The United States District Court for the District of Columbia has handed another procedural victory to plaintiff record companies in a copyright infringement suit relating to music traded over P2P networks. The court ruled that it had personal jurisdiction over an out-of-state accused file-sharer merely because the defendant offered sound recordings to the public and was able to download recordings made available by others.

Plaintiff record companies filed suit against 35 John Doe defendants, identifying those defendants by their IP addresses and the songs they were accused of illegally distributing. John Doe #18, who was notified of the suit by his ISP Verizon, asked the court to dismiss the case for lack of personal jurisdiction, arguing that he did not have sufficient contacts with the District of Columbia.

The court denied John Doe #18’s motion to dismiss. For one thing, the motion was premature. “Simply, the parties [could not] formally litigate any aspect of personal jurisdiction until the defendant [had] actually been identified.” Without knowing who the defendant was, the court could not tell whether it had jurisdiction.

As it turns out, the prematurity of the motion was inconsequential. The court held that, anonymous or not, the plaintiffs established that the court had personal jurisdiction over John Doe #18. By simply contracting with Verizon, a “District of Columbia-based ISP,” and using a Verizon facility to trade files, John Doe #18 was “transacting business” in the District, and caused tortious injury in the District.

Further, by simply making files available for download by others through his file-sharing software, and being able to download other files, John Doe #18 “clearly directed tortious activity into the District of Columbia.”

Finally, citing to the case of Gorman v. Ameritrade Holding Corp., 293 F.3d 506 (D.C.Cir. 2002), and the famous case of Zippo Mfg. Co. v. Zippo Dot Com, Inc., 952 F.Supp. 1119, (W.D.Pa.1997), the court held that John Doe #18’s computer was “transformed . . . into an interactive Internet site.” This “interactivity” provided the sort of “continuous” and “systematic” contacts with the forum sufficient to support personal jurisdiction over the defendant.

Virgin Records America, Inc. v. Does 1-35, Slip Copy, 2006 WL 1028956 (D.D.C., April 18, 2006).

I am quite honored to have been asked to speak at next week’s Blog Law & Blogging for Lawyers Seminar at the Pan Pacific Hotel in San Francisco. I will be speaking at 10:30 a.m. on Thursday, April 20, 2006 on defamation liability for bloggers and blog commenters. How humbling it will be to share the stage with Professor Raymond Nimmer, who will discuss intellectual property ownership issues relating to blogging.

The two-day seminar will feature appearences from a number of true law-and-technology luminaries, among them Kurt Opsahl, Lauren Gelman, Mia Garlick, and Denise Howell. My friend Dennis Crouch of the Patently-O blog is a co-chair of the seminar, and I thank him for the opportunity to be a part of this very interesting event.

If you’re a reader of InternetCases.com and you plan on being there, be sure to say hello.

The U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota recently issued a substantive ruling on the issue of whether a company commits trademark infringement by purchasing its competitor’s trademarks as key words to generate sponsored listings on Google and Yahoo!.

In that case (Edina Realty v. TheMLSonline.com) the court held that such conduct constitutes “use in commerce” as defined by the Lanham Act, and ordered that the case proceed to trial on the question of likelihood of confusion (which is the sine qua non of trademark infringement).

On March 30, 2006, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York issued a ruling that is contrary to the Edina Realty case. As usual, Professor Eric Goldman has all the details. This later case is called Merck v. Mediplan Health Consulting.

Simply stated, the point on which the Merck case is directly contrary to the Edina Realty case is on the question of whether purchasing a competitor’s trademark as a keyword constitutes use in commerce. While in Edina Realty the court held that this does constitute use in commerce, the court in Merck agreed with the defendants in holding that purchasing [the term] “ZOCOR” as a keyword on Internet search engines does not constitute trademark use.”

Merck v. Mediplan Health Consulting, (Slip Op.) — F.Supp —, 2006 WL 800756 (S.D. N.Y. March 30, 2006).

“Information superhighway” may one day surpass the preeminence of the phone book.

When it printed an edition of the Evansville, Indiana Metropolitan Area Yellow Pages, Ameritech Publishing accidentally left out Robert Pigman’s name from his law firm’s ad. Pigman filed suit against Ameritech, seeking damages from the business he lost due to the omission. Ameritech moved for summary judgment.

Citing to an “exculpatory clause” in the advertising contract, which limited Ameritech’s liability to the price Pigman’s firm paid for the ad, the trial court granted Ameritech’s motion. Pigman appealed, asserting that the exculpatory clause was unconscionable and void as against public policy.

The appellate court agreed with Pigman and reinstated his lawsuit against Ameritech. Applying “greater judicial scrutiny” because of the nexus between Yellow Pages advertising and the regulated public telephone service, the court held that the advertising contract was a “contract of adhesion.”

Because of the overwhelming pervasiveness of the Yellow Pages, Pigman had been left with no other meaningful choice but to accept the unreasonable limitation of liability clause. The clause was, after all, nothing more than an illusory promise, since it only required Ameritech to return money it hadn’t actually earned.

The most interesting part of the opinion, however, comes at footnote 6, where, in discussing the great importance of Yellow Pages advertising, the court takes a moment to prophesy about the future of the Internet as a medium of commerce:

We observe that sometime in the not very distant future, when every home and business is online, people may do their shopping for goods and services through the Internet. When that occurs, the printed Yellow Pages directory will no longer enjoy the unique market penetration which it does today. Then, the print medium will be preempted by the information superhighway, and the printed Yellow Pages will no longer enjoy preeminence. Today, when an error is made, the error persists for a full year until the next edition is published. When the Yellow Pages is on the Internet, errors in advertising copy will be corrected with a few keystrokes, and such instant mitigation may well obviate a claim for damages of the kind presented in this case.

Are we there yet?

Pigman v. Ameritech Publishing, Inc., 641 N.E.2d 1026 (Ct. App. Ind. 1994).