CLASS 08 : TRADEMARK INFRINGEMENT

What are the trademark implications of acts such familiar internet acts as linking and framing? What about meta-tagging and search-engine buys?

       Required

1. Brookfield Communications v. West Coast Entertainment, 174 F.3d 1036 (9th Cir. 1999) (meta-tagging discussion only).

2. Playboy Enterprises v. Welles, 7 F. Supp.2d 1098 (S.D. Cal. 1998) (meta-tags)

3. While viewing this page, go to your browser's "View" menu, select "Source" or "Page Source". See if you can find the metatags (at the beginning of the file) and examine the terms there. Are any of the terms problematic?

4. Playboy Enterprises v. Excite, 55 F. Supp.2d 1070 (C.D. Cal. 1999) (key word buys)

5. Washington Post v. Total News, 97 Civ. 1990 (S.D.N.Y. Feb. 20, 1997) (complaint; settlement; current site) (framing)

6. Ticketmaster Corp. v. Tickets.com, Inc., 2000 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 12987 (C.D. Cal., August 10, 2000)

7. Jeffrey Kuester & Peter Nieves, Hyperlinks, Frames and Meta-Tags, 38 IDEA: J.L. & Tech. 243 (1998)

8. Maureen O'Rourke, Defining the Limits of Free-Riding in Cyberspace, 33 Gonz. L. Rev. 277 (1997)

1. Ticketmaster v. Microsoft (intro, circumvention, settlement, complaint) (deep linking)

2. GMD Studios, How to Defeat Unwanted Framing of Your Site

3. Joshua M. Masur, Links, liability, and the Law: The Strange Case of Ticketmaster v. Microsoft, 23 Colum.-VLA J.L. & Arts 415 (2000)

4. Ira S. Nathenson, Internet Infoglut and Invisible Ink: Spamdexing Search Engines with Meta Tags, 12 Harv. J. L. & Tech. 43 (1998)

5. Christine D. Galbraith, Electronic billboards along the Information Superhighway: Liability under the Lanham Act for using trademarks to Key Internet Banner Ads, 41 B.C. L. Rev. 847 (2000)

No writing assignment this week, in light of short week.

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