Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, I haven't written on the blog in months, but I simply couldn't let today pass by without acknowledging the courage and perserverance shown by Rhea Drysdale in her pursuit of justice. She's my hero and I want to be just like her-A woman of action and humble fortitude. Rhea announced victory against Jason Gambert in a trademark dispute lasting more than two years.

Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, Content Aggregators should pay attention to a recent settlement between the New York Times and GateHouse Media. According to Online Media Daily , the New York Times agreed to remove headlines and first sentences of GateHouse articles referenced by the New York Times on one of its content aggregator sites, Boston.com. Is this case part of a trend ?

Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, I want to briefly touch on some collections methods and issues today. The first step is to try and collect the money yourself with follow-up invoices, letters and an offer of a payment plan. In this stage you can often accomplish two important things: getting a personal guarantee from the business owner, and getting the business owner to sign a promissory note.

Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, I wanted to give everyone an update on the DSW v. Zappos and Commission Junction case. I first blogged about this case here , back in June 2008. Very briefly, the facts of the case are thus: DSW sued Zappos and Commission Junction over alleged trademark violations. Apparently an affiliate marketer working with Zappos through Commission Junction set up some phony review sites.

Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, The world is filled with all kinds of nutty people. Mostly, this is a wonderful thing. But sometimes it's not. The case I want to discuss today involves two lawyers, a messy breakup, and a blog about "Guns, God, Food, Beer, Tools, Politics, and Whining." Stephen Hogge, a Florida attorney, operates the blog Hog on Ice . He was sued in California by a former Miami School of Law classmate, Fatima dos Santos Fahmy,

Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, The Washington State Attorney General announced in a press release yesterday that it was suing a Redmond-based SEO company, Visible.net. According to the Complaint, Visible also does business under the name WebMarketingSource.com, Caputures.com, and Captures.com )that's not a typo(. The AG also names the owner of the companies, Gilbert Walker, as a defendant in the case. The defendants sell website design, SEO,

Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, A Jury awarded 4.8 million USD to NetQuote after finding that its competitor, MostChoice , submitted more than 3,500 false applications for insurance quotes to the NetQuote website. The jury was so disgusted with MostChoice that it actually awarded double the punitive damages that NetQuote asked for in the lawsuit. Getting punitive damages is unusual; Getting double what you asked for is extremely rare.

Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, I sincerely hope no one reading this ever needs this information. However, I have been asked privately for advice on this topic by industry folks so I thought I'd write a quick post on the topic. If you have a site that includes user-generated content, you may one day receive a subpoena asking you for personally identifying information about your users.

Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, Parker vs. Yahoo!, Microsoft, 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 74512 )E.D. Pa. Sep. 26, 2008( A federal court recently ruled that a lawsuit against Yahoo! and Microsoft for displaying cached versions of websites after the website owner has complained can go forward. Some of you may be experiencing a tingling feeling of deja vu. That's because the same plaintiff who brought this lawsuit against Yahoo!

Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, Those of you who get paid to build links aren't going to believe this one. One of the world's largest law firms, Jones Day , actually filed suit against a small e-commerce company, BlockShopper , for linking to it with the anchor text "Jones Day." Yes. I'm telling you the truth. The weird thing is BlockShopper's site wasn't defamatory, negative, or competing for services. Still,

Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, Attention everyone who co-blogs! If you create a blog collaboratively with another person, you may be wondering whether your fellow blogger could get you into legal trouble. We've known for years that website operators cannot be held responsible for their users' content thanks to the broad immunities created by section 230 of the CDA. That's old news. What's still unclear, however,

Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, Today I'm discussing a case involving alleged trademark infringement and meta tags. It's very dangerous to outrank your competitor, especially if that competitor has limitless pockets and very generic registered trademarks. U-Haul and eMove, Inc. vs Michael Glanz and HireAHelper, Inc. United States District Court of Arizona, 2-08-cv-01271 The Parties U-Haul owns eMove.com ,

Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, I am often asked, "Can I talk about my competitor on my website?" To answer this question, I thought I would do a quick post about comparative advertising. The Federal Trade Commission promotes lawful comparative advertising as a great way to inform consumers and increase competition.

Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, In November 2007 I blogged about a wacky lawsuit involving the movie/book/TV phenomena called "The Secret" and an SEO, Dan Hollings. Several months have gone by and both parties have been busy. Background Summary The Secret )and all the international conglomerations and people that have a finger in ownership of The Secret ( sued Hollings for trademark infringement and violations of his alleged duty of loyalty.

Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, I have an update on the Jason Gambert Saga. For those of you wanting a refresher, please see my first post on the internet marketer trying to trademark "SEO" and my first update. When I last I provided an update, Gambert had filed 41-page response to SEOmoz's opposition proceeding and requested that all further legal proceedings be kept secret from the public.

Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, I'm continuing my series on important contract clauses for Legal Monday. I'm looking at Limitation of Liability provisions today. A Limitation of Liability clause places a cap on the amount of money an unsatisfied client could win in Court. It is a very powerful tool to limit your risk. Important Note : Never use disclaimers of warranties, indemnifications, or limitations of liability as excuses to do bad work.

Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, Continuing my mini-series on SEO/M contract clauses, today's Legal Monday focuses on indemnification clauses . These kinds of provisions are standard in many consulting contracts. They can be extremely valuable or extremely dangerous in your contract. Therefore, it is very important to understand and use them intelligently. Even if you don't want to delve into indemnifications in your contracts, remember that larger,

Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, Last week, many of you requested more posts on common contract clauses. Your wish is my command: Today, I'm very briefly going to review "opportunity to cure" provisions. This provision is valuable for any one providing a SEO/M consulting services. Why do I need to include an "opportunity to cure" provision in my consulting contracts? Unfortunately,

Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, Today's Legal Monday is brief )for a change!(, but very important for anyone doing SEO consulting. When selling their products, consultants tend to use overstate their abilities and over promise on deliverables. It is important to resist this temptation and communicate as effectively and honestly with clients as possible. A certain amount of over-selling is expected and there is even a legal word for it, "puffery.

Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, I've had a few different people approach me in the last couple months because their sites have been removed by Google based on the filing of a DMCA Complaint. The notification in Google's webmaster tools looks something like this: In response to a complaint we received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed 1 result)s( from this page. If you wish,