McHugh Fuller Law Group, using nursing home surveys published by the federal government, often seeks to gather litigants for class action suits against possibly-abusive nursing homes/employees. In this case, it decided PruittHealth-Moultrie's survey responses warranted further litigation. It published an ad seeking "suffering loved ones" who might be interested in suing the nursing home -- one that prominently used the nursing home's logo and name.

Naturally, PruittHealth felt this use of its trademark to be disparaging, as it hinted that the company was mistreating its residents. It sued for damages, claiming the law firm's use of its name and logo "diluted" the brand. But its argument had nothing to do with the normal sort of "dilution" often claimed in court. PruittHealth didn't feel potential customers would be misled, but rather that its use in this form took the PruittHealth name down a notch or two.

At issue in this case is tarnishment, which OCGA § 10-1-451 (b) describes as “subsequent use by another of the same or any similar trademark, trade name, label, or form of advertisement” adopted and used by a person, association, or union “if there exists a likelihood of injury to business reputation … of the prior user, notwithstanding the absence of competition between the parties or of confusion as to the source of goods or services.” This theory of liability “has had some success when defendant has used plaintiff’s mark as a mark for clearly unwholesome or degrading goods or services.”

PruittHealth testified that it began receiving calls from concerned customers about the patients in its care as a result of the ad. McHugh Fuller testified that it had received 200 queries, resulting in 11 filed lawsuits -- not necessarily a rebuttal of PruittHealth's "likelihood of injury" claims.

The Supreme Court, reversing the state appeals court decision, points out that things that may result in damage to trademark holders are not always "tarnishing" under Georgia state law.

However, not every unwelcome use of one’s trademark in the advertising of another provides a basis for a tarnishment claim. See 6 Callman § 22:19. Tarnishment can occur “only if the defendant uses the designation as its own trademark for its own goods or services.”

[...]

Here, McHugh Fuller was advertising its legal services to individuals who suspect that their loved ones have been harmed by negligent or abusive nursing home services at a specific PruittHealth nursing home. The ad used PruittHealth’s marks in a descriptive manner to identify the specific PruittHealth facility; indeed, McHugh Fuller was counting on the public to identify PruittHealth-Moultrie by the PruittHealth marks used in the ad. The ad did not attempt to link PruittHealth’s marks directly to McHugh Fuller’s own goods or services. McHugh Fuller was advertising what it sells – legal services, which are neither unwholesome nor degrading – under its own trade name, service mark, and logo, each of which appears in the challenged ad. No one reading the ad reproduced above would think that McHugh Fuller was doing anything other than identifying a health care facility that the law firm was willing to sue over its treatment of patients. In short, the ad very clearly was an ad for a law firm and nothing more.

PruittHealth may not have liked what the advertising insinuated (and, indeed, fielded concerned phone calls because of the advertising) but that alone is not enough to bring claims of trademark tarnishment. Advertising is full of unfavorable insinuations and unflattering comparisons, and this law firm's litigant fishing expedition is no different than ads claiming Corporation X's service is less than spectacular while using Corporation X's trademark in the ad copy.

Contrary to PruittHealth’s assertion in the trial court, trademark law does not impose a blanket prohibition on referencing a trademarked name in advertising. “Indeed, it is often virtually impossible to refer to a particular product for purposes of comparison, criticism, point of reference, or any other purpose without using the mark.”

PruittHealth's idea of how trademark law should be enforced goes far beyond expanding Georgia's trademark tarnishment law. It rubs right up against speech protected by the federal government.

Moreover, interpreting OCGA § 10-1- 451 (b) expansively to prohibit the use of PruittHealth’s marks to identify its facilities and services in any way, as the company urges, would raise profound First Amendment issues. [...] “Much useful social and commercial discourse would be all but impossible if speakers were under threat of an infringement lawsuit every time they made reference to a person, company or product by using its trademark.” New Kids on the Block, 971 F2d at 307.

This isn't one of the more egregious examples of using IP protections to shut people up that we've seen. But the end result of PruittHealth's lawsuit -- had the appeals court's decision been allowed to stand -- would have been indistinguishable from the more hamfisted bullying efforts detailed at Techdirt over the years.

from the it's-in-the-game dept

As you will recall, in 2013 Russia instituted a delightfully obtuse piece of legislation that made it illegal to disseminate "propaganda" within the country that centered around "non-traditional sexual relationships." This law, designed essentially to both push the LBGT community back into the closet and to effectively criminalize being too gay in public, has butted heads with modernity several times now. The silver lining in this is that the law's practical application has forced its supporters to publicly display exactly how petty and silly they are, as powerful legislators attempt to take action against such virile threats as emojis. Coupled with the Russian governments worry that American streaming media might be a form of HAARP-style mind-control, not to mention the government's willingness to show the world how its vaguely-crafted legislation can be used purely to silence dissenting speech, Russian officials have painted quite a picture of the country's lack of a commitment to basic freedoms.

But where slapping around dissenting political speech is par for the authoritarian course, the laser focus the Russian government has on our LGBT brothers and sisters is confounding. That bigotry exists is not news, but Russia's dedication to it from a legislative perspective reeks of distraction-farming. And, as said previously, it can reach really silly levels, such as members of the Russian government calling on a ban of EA Sports' FIFA17 game, purely because the game includes the option to have players wear rainbow shoelaces, as their real-life counterparts did.

Communist MPs sent a letter to the communications oversight and state consumer protection agencies complaining that the popular EA Sports football game, which is rated all ages, “invites users to support the English football premier league’s Rainbow Laces action, a massive campaign in support of LGBT”, Izvestia newspaper reported.

United Russia MP Irina Rodnina, a former figure skater who won three Olympic gold medals for the Soviet Union, told Izvestia that the authorities needed to “verify the possibility of distributing this game on the territory of the Russian Federation”.

We should congratulate our Russian friends on being first to market on this kind of bigotry. After all, the game is also available in Saudi Arabia, a country not known for its liberal policies on homosexuality, yet Russia beat them to the punch. That's quite a feat for the homophobic.

But this is what you get with authoritarian regimes that play in the world of social policies. There are far worse applications of Russia's anti-gay law that one can reference, but there is value of spotlighting the otherwise hilarious absurdity of the federal government of a nuclear power campaigning against a video game over rainbow shoelaces. Anyone who might have thought that this law had important work to do within Russia cannot possibly still think that there isn't overreach.

from the ABORT,-FAIL dept

Another high-profile asset forfeiture battle has resulted in the government relinquishing its claim on seized cash and returning it to its owner.

In February 2014, DEA agents took $11,000 from Charles Clarke at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport. The DEA claimed Clarke's luggage "smelled" like marijuana. It may have been right (Clarke was a recreational marijuana smoker), but it didn't even bother to get a second opinion from a drug dog. Nor did it find any drugs or paraphernalia when it searched Clarke and his baggage.

It did, however, declare the $11,000 in college funds Clarke had saved over five years to be drug money. So, it took the cash from him and sent him on his way.

Normally, the burden of proof falls on the person whose property has been taken. That's how civil asset forfeiture works. The government files a claim against the seized property, cutting the original owner of the property out of the loop as much as possible. Fortunately, the judge presiding over the forfeiture dispute shifted the burden back on law enforcement after finding Clarke to be a credible complainant.

"Frankly, the fella sounds like he's telling the truth," U.S. District Court Judge William O. Bertelsman said in a hearing over how much information the U.S. government should be required to turn over to Clarke's lawyers. "He's not changed his story once in all the depositions and testimony that he's given even under the threat of perjury."

Bertelsman also ordered the government to show proof that the seized money was the result of criminal activity. This was obviously going to be a problem for the government, considering all it had to work with was some luggage that carried a hint of marijuana odor. That, and Clarke's cash, which it was in no hurry to give up, especially since it had to split the take thirteen ways.

“The United States government has agreed to give Charles Clarke back every penny of the $11,000 it seized from him at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport in February 2014, plus interest. Charles is very pleased that he will get his life savings back and that the whole ordeal is now behind him.”

All it would take to combat many questionable seizures would be a shift in the burden of proof. The process makes it almost impossible for those whose property has been seized to mount a successful attempt to reclaim it. The filing of cases as "Gov't v. Property" allows the seizing agency to run unopposed (as it were), since the seized property can't speak for itself and the property owner is tied up in bureaucratic paperwork with strict time limits that is wholly reliant on the seizing agency properly notifying seizure victims of the whereabouts of their cash, etc.

If the government can't come up with criminal charges, it very likely cannot come up with proof the money is tied to illegal activity. But too few courts are willing to shift the burden of proof, leaving the government to indulge in its perverted incentives.

from the but-will-it-be-made-public? dept

We just recently wrote about Senators on the Intelligence Committee requesting that President Obama declassify information about the Russians' activities in trying to influence the last election. While much of "the Russians did it!" chatter that's been going around has felt exaggerated, the real issue is that so little actual evidence has been presented one way or the other. It would be good to actually reveal publicly what has happened, if anything. Now comes the news that President Obama has, at least, asked the intelligence agencies to compile a report on the evidence:

President Obama has ordered American intelligence agencies to produce a full report on Russian efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election, his homeland security adviser said on Friday. He also directed them to develop a list of “lessons learned” from the broad campaign the United States has accused Russia of carrying out to steal emails, publish their contents and probe the vote-counting system.

“We may have crossed a new threshold here,” Lisa Monaco, one of Mr. Obama’s closest aides and the former head of the national security division of the Justice Department, told reporters Friday. “He expects to receive this report before he leaves office.”

Receiving the report before he leaves office is one thing. Declassifying it and releasing it to the public is another. Hopefully he is willing to do both. Of course, the article notes that some agencies, such as the FBI, consider it an "active investigation" and thus are not happy about the idea of revealing anything publicly. Of course, without revealing the evidence -- one way or the other -- it just leads to greater speculation and conspiracy theories. And even just a report summarizing the findings will be kind of useless as well. Remember, we've already had the administration accuse Russia of hacking in relation to the election -- but without providing any actual evidence to back it up. And, again, that has resulted in people not being willing to trust the claim.

Given all that, it seems the most logical response should be to get this report and then to declassify it as soon as possible. Unfortunately, there's little in the Obama administration's history that suggests this is the path it will take.

from the that's-a-problem dept

We didn't cover anything about the whole bogus story that Rolling Stone published last year about campus rape at UVA, which it later had to retract and take down. The whole thing was something of a clusterfuck, but not directly relevant to what we write about here. Eventually, it led to a defamation case filed by UVA's former associate dean, Nicole Eramo, against Rolling Stone, which was pretty interesting and resulted in a somewhat surprising loss for Rolling Stone. As we've discussed plenty of times, winning a defamation lawsuit -- especially against a public figure -- is particularly difficult (and that's a good thing). The actions need to be particularly egregious. And, in this case, the jury decided that they were. I'm certainly not going to defend Rolling Stone and its ridiculously shoddy reporting, which seemed to be confirmation bias piled upon confirmation bias.

But as some quickly pointed out, the verdict could have some serious chilling effects on media organizations -- in part because the jury found that the originally updated version of the story -- as the details reported began to crumble -- and which included an editor's note apologizing for problems with the original reporting, was viewed by the jury as a republication, and, even worse, it was that "republication" that met the "actual malice" standpoint needed to get over the defamation bar.

This is problematic.

It was the original reporting that was bad. The apology was good. Yet, the way the jury ruled, Rolling Stone would have been better off not apologizing for the error and not adding the editor's note to the story. That seems crazy. And thus, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (RCFP) and eight big media organizations (including the Washington Post, who was the publication that first exposed many of the problems in the Rolling Stone article) have filed an amicus brief with the court raising this issue (found via Eriq Gardner's excellent reporting at THREsq).

The argument is pretty straightforward. Creating a chilling effect on correcting stories and apologizing for errors is really, really bad.

Journalists have always had a commitment to ethical standards by assuming responsibility for their errors and setting the record straight. Being accountable to the public by updating stories as needed is one way to reassure readers that the news media are dedicated to accuracy in their reporting. As proof of the power of corrections and their contribution to reputable journalism, a 1998 study conducted by the American Society of Newspaper Editors found that 63 percent of newspaper readers “‘feel better’ about the quality of the news coverage” when there are corrections....

[....]

In the case of news published on the Internet, the news media can more quickly and meaningfully provide more in-depth modifications and updates than in the traditional print context. An explanation of a mistake can be made at any time in the same place as the original article, where the same audience is more likely to see it. In addition, “[d]igital publishing has made it possible for editors not only to scrub or enhance stories as they develop but also to pull back the curtain – to make sure readers see and understand what they’ve done.”...

[....]

Numerous high-profile examples show that the tradition that has developed in online journalism is to leave a controversial story on the website while noting the problems with it. Adding an explanation by no means indicates that the publishers are supporting, reaffirming, or republishing the facts of the original story. On the contrary, they are preserving the record of what was previously written while adding greater context

Indeed, this is the same policy we take at Techdirt. In the cases that we've made serious mistakes in our reporting, we leave up the original, but with a prominent correction and apology. That shouldn't be seen as a "republication" and an admission that the republication was malicious. That's clearly a bogus interpretation and very problematic. It's much, much worse to simply disappear an article with errors or problematic reporting, because that's hiding things, rather than being more open and transparent. We make fun of the publications that simply disappear such stories.

Because correcting false statements in an article, even short of retracting the entire article, will often be considered a mitigation of damages or evidence of lack of malice, responding to new information and posting updates are clearly encouraged by courts and seen as a positive act. Allowing the attachment of an editor’s note to the original article, which backs away from claims in that publication, to constitute a “republication” is thus inconsistent with clear public policy interests in encouraging greater explanation as stories develop.

Hopefully the court reconsiders this issue -- otherwise, one hopes that an appeals court, or even the Supreme Court will take up this issue on appeal down the road. Publications shouldn't be punished for admitting to mistakes. That would seem to go against all common sense.

from the takedowns-are-coming dept

It's well-known at this point that HBO guards its intellectual property on the Game of Thrones franchise more jealously than a direwolf with a freshly harvested bone. To that end, the company often times treats some of its biggest fans with disdain, such as when it killed off viewing parties that would otherwise generate more interest in the show, or the times it abused the DMCA process as a way to keep spoilers from the show from permeating. These actions are indeed annoying, but they lack a certain something in the pure evil department.

"My daughter, who happens to be autistic, was doing an art challenge called Huevember which consisted of doing a piece of art based on a different colour as you worked your way round a colour wheel," Jonathan Wilcox, of Edwinstowe in the UK, told The Register on Thursday.

"She was uploading her pictures to a variety of sites and sharing them on Facebook. For this particular piece, she decided to title it 'Winter is Coming.' I do not believe she uploaded the picture to RedBubble to make any particular financial gain, she just thought it a sensible place to put it."

So a child makes some art and puts it on the internet, because that's what you do these days. It should be noted that the artwork was not being sold on the site, only displayed. HBO's lawyers come across it and take it down, with nary a conversation. And, lest you think that the artwork itself had something to do with the show, thus ameliorating HBO's actions, here is the artwork in question.

As someone who watches the show regularly, the image doesn't appear to me to be in any way connected to the show. Nor, likely, is the text itself. It's far more likely that a child that created some art at a certain time of year came up with the phrase independently. But, because that phrase is trademarked by HBO, the takedown was issued.

The takedown notice forwarded by Redbubble to Wilcox doesn't specifically cite trademark as the law being applied, but it's the only one that makes sense. That means that the test in question is whether or not anyone is going to confuse this artwork as being created by or endorsed by HBO. And if you believe the answer to that question is "yes," then I'm surprised you're able to put your pants on in the morning. The whole thing seems to be confusing, because even though the DMCA doesn't apply to trademark law, Redbubble is clearly treating it as a DMCA takedown -- where it just replaced the normal "copyright" terms with "IP/Publicity Rights" -- and even uses its DMCA email address for any "counternotice." And the "counternotice" process is identical to a DMCA counternotice process, which requires the family to accept jurisdiction in California (remember, they're in the UK) if they counter the claim.

This is ridiculous on many levels, but once again highlights how the power of copyright to be a tool for censorship grows and expands and swallows other legal doctrines in the same neighborhood.

You can sense Wilcox's frustration in his comments.

"My first reaction to the letter was 'FFS.' HBO should get a life or stick something where the sun doesn't shine," Wilcox said.

"On further investigation, it appears HBO are doing this all over the place regarding this phrase. It seems to have upset a lot of people on Etsy and elsewhere who have had the same or similar letter."

This is the problem when large entities and their legal departments use the DMCA (or a quasi-DMCA-like) process like a shotgun, spraying censorious buckshot at many targets, only some of which might be truly infringing. This lack of legal nuance manages to catch innocent content producers in the crossfire -- in this case an autistic teenager who painted a picture. One wonders how the more virtuous heroes from the show would react.

from the good-deals-on-cool-stuff dept

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from the those-that-live-by-the-tweet,-die-by-the-tweet dept

Last month, we pointed out that that pretty much everyone agrees that TPP is dead... except that some still cling to the hope that Trump might be persuaded to carry out another swift U-turn and revivify the zombie deal. As Mike noted, Trump doesn't seem to be against these kinds of mega-trade deals in principle, it's just that he says the US generally concedes too much in them. That means he'd need some kind of high-profile win to make TPP 2.0 compatible with his earlier condemnation of TPP 1.0's terms.

The hope amongst true TPP believers seems to be that Trump could reopen the negotiations, talk tough, and strike a deal that is far more favorable to the US, which he could then ratify, holding it up as another Trump triumph. But in an article on the Cobram Courier site, the Australian ambassador to the US, Joe Hockey, says it would be "fanciful" to think the other TPP nations would happily reopen negotiations so that Trump could rewrite it in his favor. Leaving aside the fact that as one of Australia's top diplomats, Hockey doubtless knows exactly what his government's views are on this and thus speaks with authority, his logic is simple and pretty inarguable:

If the US gets a better deal out of the TPP then the other 11 countries have to make sacrifices and those other countries are going to find it politically impossible to sell it domestically that they are making more sacrifices than President Trump.

Hockey said that governments in the other nations had already come under intense domestic pressure over the current TPP, and the concessions they had needed to make in order to secure a deal. A new agreement would be even worse, because there's an extra factor exacerbating the situation:

Those pressures wouldn't get easier if in a very celebrated way the president of the United States says 'We got a better deal' because that means we got a lesser deal.

Despite the prayers of some die-hard supporters, it seems unlikely that Trump could manage to get the other TPP nations to agree to reopen the deal after eight years of fraught negotiations, and then persuade them to sign up to amendments that gave the US more and the others less. But even if he did, it would take only one triumphant @realDonaldTrump tweet boasting hyperbolically of his success -- naturally RT'd ten thousand times around the world -- for the President to make the new deal irremediably toxic for the other TPP governments, and thus impossible to ratify.

from the municipal-cheat-code dept

I have some admiration for South Korea's ability to look squarely at the national hostage situation that is its northerly neighbor and spend so much time enjoying video games. That this dedication to my favorite hobby occasionally pulls the country's government into putting forward dumb laws is an unfortunate by-product, however. It seems the South Korean government is still at it, as it attempts to join Japan in criminalizing cheating in video games.

And it has managed to construct this law to criminalize cheating in what simply has to be the dumbest way possible.

According to PvPLive, a recent amendment passed by the South Korean parliament bans the “manufacturing and distributing programs that are not allowed by the game company and its Terms of Service.” In theory, this makes it easier for the creators of competitive games to crack down on things like hacking programs, aimbots, and other game mods that give players an unfair advantage in online play.

Great theory, but this method for stopping cheaters should be setting off alarm bells all over the place. Criminalizing the violation of a ToS is a really, really bad idea. Our own CFAA legislation should serve as a wondeful primer on how broadly criminalizing violating terms of service can result in gross overreach by prosecutors who will use the law as a tool to jail people nobody thinks should be imprisoned. There's a reason why these attempts to use ToS to thwart cheating, or modding, are widely considered creative end-arounds to the actual law: because they're basically bullshit. Codifying into law the criminalization of the violation of a software ToS that nobody reads is casting quite a wide net to combat an otherwise small problem.

It's also well worth noting that most of the benign modding community regularly violates game ToS as they do their work.

But while this could deter would-be hackers from creating programs explicitly for cheating, the somewhat ambiguous act of outlawing any program that violates the Terms of Service has some League of Legendsand Overwatch players worried that non-malicious mods could be caught in the crossfire.

Look, eSports is becoming a significant enough industry that I understand the effort to combat cheating within it. And the online portion of the gaming experience is so center stage at this point that it would have been surprising if governments weren't starting to look at how to protect the industry from a saturation of cheaters who break the game for other gamers. But broadly worded legislative nukes aren't the way to combat a cheating insurgency.

from the that's-not-how-it-works dept

Tennessee Rep. Marsha Blackburn doesn't have a very good history demonstrating any knowledge of how the internet works. She's generally in favor of two very stupid policies related to the internet. First, getting rid of net neutrality. Second, forcing tech companies to censor the internet to stop "piracy." The fact that her rationales for these two things are completely in conflict with each other doesn't seem to enter her thought process. That is, she claims that there shouldn't be any net neutrality because it's important to keep the internet free from all regulations. Here's Blackburn explaining this point in a nice, quick and utterly idiotic whiteboard video:

If you can't see that, she starts out by talking up how wonderful the internet is just as it is today, and notes that it's necessary for creating jobs. Then she says this:

Some people fear that without government intervention, that entrepreneurs and innovators are going to hijack the internet that you enjoy. The World Wide Web! This hasn't happened. And there has never been a time when a consumer needed a federal bureaucrat to intervene.

Then she talks about passing her legislation to block the FCC "from ever regulating the internet" because "we want to keep it open free and prosperous."

Of course, she's quite willing to sing a different tune when it comes to her other pet projects. She was a major backer of SOPA, of course, which was a bill to regulate the internet and open it up to Chinese-style site-blocking. A few months ago, she also made the nutty claim that the script kiddie botnet hack that took down large parts of the internet would have been stopped if only SOPA had been passed which made no sense at all.

If you can't see that, it's part of a clip of Blackburn on CNN talking about "fake news," where she says:

If anyone is putting fake news out there, the ISPs have the obligation to, in some way, get that off the web. And maybe it's time for these information systems to look to have some type of news editor doing some vetting on that. Whether it's the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians or whomever. You do not want that out there because it's... because it's fake news! It is not something that is going to be correct. It's going to end up being refuted. But it takes time, effort and energy to do that, and trying to sway or misinform is completely inappropriate, and in my opinion unethical.

So she isn't directly calling for legislation, but any time you have a sitting legislator (not to mention a Trump transition team member...) talking about how internet companies need to censor the internet to do away with "fake news" your ears should perk up. First off, note that she says that refuting fake stories takes "time, effort and energy" but doesn't note that finding "some type of news editor" who can review the news postings of billions of internet users is, um, physically impossible. Does she really not understand the scale of what she's talking about?

Second, I get the feeling that Marsha Blackburn's definiton of "fake news" differs from many other people's -- which is why we've noted that the whole "fake news freakout" is so misguided. The term can mean just about anything -- and all too frequently means "news I disagree with." I'm going to imagine that Rep. Blackburn doesn't much like this article for instance. Does she believe that her friends, the internet service providers, have "an obligation" to get this article "off the web"?

Because that's a pretty serious issue: you have a sitting legislator effectively calling for internet censorship based on a vague standard of news being "fake." Somewhat ironically, Blackburn has been one of the most vocal opponents of the bogeyman of the Fairness Doctrine -- which was an attempt to beat back biased news in the past by requiring "equal time" to opposing views. But Blackburn is constantly freaking out about a non-existent "fairness doctrine" for the internet that she insists was part of the FCC's net neutrality rules (it wasn't, and never was suggested). But her suggestion for having internet companies censor "fake news" seems even worse than a fairness doctrine. Rather than encouraging more speech, Blackburn is flat out supporting having internet companies censor content they deem to be "fake." That's bad.