Posts Tagged: "defamation"

Is Your Brand Protection Strategy Defamation-Proof?

Robert Willison, an Atlanta real estate investor, could not believe what he was seeing on the computer screen. A business associate had mentioned that Mr. Willison might want to Google himself, as some odd search results were appearing. And there they were. Post after post after post, across numerous websites and social media platforms, alleging that Mr. Willison was a sociopathic criminal. According to the posts, Mr. Willison sold drugs to federal judges, stole credit cards numbers, stole money, made death threats, committed home invasions, masterminded a Ponzi scheme, and more…. Understanding the best practices for handling these situations can help turn them around, just as Mr. Willison did, to protect your online reputation – a valuable component to both an individual and their business’s intellectual property

Understanding Insurance Coverage for Intellectual Property Claims

Recent multi million-dollar jury verdicts on trade secret misappropriation claims reflect that there can be significant risk to companies when employees leave or joint development relationships dissolve. Coupled with the passage of the federal Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016, which created a federal civil cause of action for such claims, these verdicts have heightened the need to refine intellectual property protection strategies. But even with greater attention paid to improving protection measures, litigation can be inevitable, and such cases, as demonstrated by a recent survey conducted by the American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA), can be expensive. Companies should consider whether insurance coverage is available to cover litigation costs. In this article we examine a sampling of cases where coverage questions were raised in connection with intellectual property disputes and the differing outcomes which ensued.

Copyright and Fair Use in the Age of YouTube

The opinion acknowledges, in a footnote on page 3, that videos of the type that the Klein’s created, is not unique. Instead, it is part of a growing genre of “reaction videos” in which portions of an original video are interspersed with commentary to create a new creative work… Luckily for the Kleins, their fans were ready and willing to create a legal fund for their use. YouTube has also taken action to protect some content creators subject to false DMCA notices. However, with over 800 unique users, and over 100 hours of new videos being uploaded every minute, clearly YouTube cannot be required to protect all of its content creators from false copyright infringement allegations. In light of this decision, perhaps we are approaching a time where reconsideration, and revision, of the DMCA, is warranted.

NH Judge rules ‘patent troll’ not ‘necessarily pejorative’

In a breathtakingly disingenuous passage from the decision, Judge Tucker finds that not all definitions of patent trolls are necessarily pejorative. Are we really to believe Judge Tucker thinks the term “patent troll” is a loving and endearing term spoken with great admiration for inventors who spend tremendous amounts of time, money and energy seeking patents on their inventions? The reality is the term patent troll has been intentionally used in a derisive manner to belittle patent owners and manipulate decision makers on every level for over a decade. Large corporate entities that steal patent property rather than pay fair and reasonable rates to use the property have colluded to convince the public, press, Judiciary and Congress that inventors and patents are evil with a false narrative about patent owners. They use false “facts” that they constantly repeat, but which have been debunked over and over again.

Facilitating ‘fake news’ through legitimate website prohibited by court in the Netherlands

In a remarkable judgment of 10 January 2018 a court in the Netherlands ordered a hosting provider to make a legitimate website permanently inaccessible because it was “part of an unlawful concept”. The plaintiffs in this case have been harassed on the internet by a non-existing organization called G|A|B|M|E, which supposedly stands for ‘Global Advisory Board Middle East’. One of the plaintiffs received an e-mail on 1 December 2017 warning him that in a few hours a “report” would be released revealing him, his companies and some employees as frauds. Indeed, a few hours later a publication was distributed via the internet with the title ‘International Security and Fraud Alert Iranian Fraud’. In this publication (the ‘report’) the plaintiff, his companies and some employees were wrongly accused of fraud, corruption and money laundering… The decision has definitely broadened the liability of hosting providers and has rendered those who are the victims of defamation a new tool to fight accusations on the internet, but one has to bear in mind that the circumstances of this case were and are exceptional.