Socially Aware

July 31, 2023 - Section 230 Safe Harbor, Trademark
WallStreetBets Founder Loses Trademark Suit Against Reddit
By: Aaron P. Rubin, Anthony M. Ramirez, Julie O'Neill and Heather M. Whitney
In Jaime Rogozinski v. Reddit Inc , U.S. District Judge Maxine M. Chesney for the Northern District of California dismissed WALLSTREETBETS Reddit community founder Jamie Rogozinski’s claims against Reddit for trademark infringement and dilution as well as various state law claims. Rogozinski established WALLSTREETBETS
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July 07, 2020 - Trademark, Cyberbullying, Marketing, Defamation, Section 230 Safe Harbor, Free Speech, Litigation
Debate over §230 of the CDA rages on; Twitter defeats defamation suit; Booking.com held valid trademark
By: Anthony M. Ramirez
In a purported attempt to safeguard free speech, President Trump has issued an order “Preventing Online Censorship,” that would eliminate the protections afforded by one of our favorite topics here at Socially Aware , Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which generally protects
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June 04, 2020 - Trademark, Web Scraping, Copyright, IP
Webscraping a Publicly Available Database May Constitute Trade Secret Misappropriation
By: J. Alexander Lawrence
Is scraping data from a publicly available website trade secret misappropriation? Based on a new opinion from the Eleventh Circuit, It might be. In Compulife Software, Inc. v. Newman , Compulife Software , a life insurance quote database service alleged that one of its
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May 20, 2019 - Advertising, Trademark, Artificial Intelligence, Data Security, Hacking, Defamation, Fair Use, Litigation, Right of Publicity
Trademarks as hashtags; influencer sues company allegedly depicting him in an ad; new uses for AI technology
By: Aaron P. Rubin
A federal district court in California has added to the small body of case law addressing whether it’s permissible for one party to use another party’s trademark as a hashtag. The court held that, for several reasons, the 9th Circuit’s nominative fair use analysis
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March 28, 2017 - Trademark, Copyright, IP, Litigation
Supreme Court Rules Cheerleading Uniform Designs Are Copyrightable
By: Jennifer Lee Taylor
On March 22, 2017, the Supreme Court held in Star Athletica, LLC v. Varsity Brands that design elements of cheerleading uniforms may be protected under the Copyright Act. The 6-2 decision, written by Justice Thomas, clarified the scope of protection afforded to clothing designs
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July 18, 2016 - Trademark
#Trademarks?: Hashtags as Trademarks Revisited
By: Aaron P. Rubin
Since our previous article on the emerging issue of trademark rights in hashtags , the use of hashtags in social media marketing has continued to grow. Described as the “ignition keys to a social media keyword search,” hashtags can be powerful tools for creating
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July 28, 2015 - Internet of Things, Trademark, FTC, Live streaming, Cloud Computing, Copyright, IP, First Amendment, Bankruptcy, Privacy, Infographic, Online Reviews, Wearable Computers
Hot Off the Press: The July/August Issue of Our Socially Aware Newsletter Is Now Available
By: Aaron P. Rubin
The latest issue of our Socially Aware newsletter is now available here. In this issue of Socially Aware , our Burton Award -winning guide to the law and business of social media, we present a “grand unifying theory” of today’s leading technologies and the
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May 13, 2015 - Trademark, Litigation
#Trademarks?: Hashtags as Trademarks
By: Aaron P. Rubin
Hashtags have become ubiquitous in social media, but their status as intellectual property—particularly as trademarks—is still developing. First adopted by Twitter users to link user posts, hashtags are character strings preceded by the “#” symbol that generate a link to all other posts containing
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November 18, 2014 - Trademark
Monkey Selfie Redux
When we last examined the intellectual property issues raised by a self-portrait taken by a talented female Indonesian crested black macaque—popularly known as the “Monkey Selfie”—we concluded that there was unlikely to be any copyright protection in the work, under either U.S. law or
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January 27, 2014 - Trademark, Litigation, Supreme Court
You May Not Necessarily Be the Master of Your Domain
The ability to associate goods and services with a specific domain name can make or break a business, so much so that companies are still willing to fork over millions to purchase domain names. And although you may consider yourself lucky to have registered
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