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,

Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, For Legal Monday, I'm going to spotlight a case dealing with SEO, affiliate marketing, commissions-based SEO, and the importance of having a clear, written contract. The Parties In this Utah case , Margae Inc. , an internet marketing company with an odd homepage, is suing Clear Link , another internet marketing company. Clear Link is a big fish providing and managing affiliate marketing services for some hot properties,

Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, DSW , a large shoe retailer, filed a federal trademark infringement case last month against Zappos.com and Commission Junction . Here's the background in brief: DSW has been operating DSWshoes.com since about 2000. The site includes information about its 200 plus brick-and-mortar stores, but does not offer direct, online shoe sales. Zappos sells shoes online. Over 840 million of them last year.

Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, I have some disconcerting news to report on today's Legal Monday. In a move that it will surely regret, the Associated Press )AP( declared war on the internet. Maybe that's a slight overstatement, but the AP will certainly rue the day it decided to adopt a policy of sending DMCA take-down notices to bloggers and social news aggregators. Last week, the AP sent seven DMCA take-down notices to The Drudge Retort,

Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, It's not Monday, but I hope it's worth the wait. Our European colleagues have been buzzing about a new law prohibiting certain stealth marketing tactics. Distilled , IPA , The BBC, BigMouthMedia , The Times Online and Marketing Week have speculated on the potential fallout of the new regulation. Many have predicted the demise of common, but controversial covert marketing techniques , including paid links, fake reviews,

Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, Happy De Facto Legal Monday! Little did I know what an exciting morning it would turn out to be! Definitely worth an update to the blog! Jason Gambert has delighted us with another literary and legal masterpiece in his misguided effort to trademark "SEO." Here's the brief refresher/update on the Gambert Saga: 1. In April, I discovered that Jason Gambert was trying to trademark the term "SEO.

Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, There has been a lot of buzz surrounding New York's new law requiring online retailers to collect sales tax from their New York Customers if they engage affiliate marketers in that state. The New York Times ) original coverage and the Overstock fallout (, the New York Post , Vastplanet , Cost Per News, and The Wired Blog represent a handful of the coverage out there.

Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, Today we're going to contrast two recent judicial opinions on the use of a competitor's trademark in meta-tags. Same issues; Different outcomes. Let's take a very brief look at each case. North American Medical Corp. v Axiom 2008 WL 918411 )11th Cir. April 7, 2008( The two companies involved in this suit make spinal decompression devices. Allegedly,

Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, Last week, there was minor uproar over a Florida District Court's Order involving negative keywords. Understandably, many SEO/Ms were anxious that the Court screwed something up that would prevent companies from bidding on their competitors' trademarks for keyword advertising. Ars Technica ran the headline "'Negative Keyword' Ruling May Have Big Impact On search Ads.

Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please The Mozzers, Pssst. I've got a secret. It involves the hokey pop culture phenomenon, The Secret, and the controversial SEM, Dan Hollings. Okay. I lied. It's not a secret. In fact, the whole nasty mess is public record because the owners of The Secret are suing their former internet marketer for trademark infringement and violating his duty of loyalty to them. The case, TS Merchandising v. Hollings ,

Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, Last Friday, I had the pleasure of attending the Law and Business of Online Advertising, a conference co-sponsored by the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology and University of Santa Claras High Tech Law Institute . It was a Who's Who of online marketing super stars, including Eric Goldman )my hero(, Kim Howell )poor thing had to explain online marketing to liberal, non-technology academics(,

Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, According to Google, its Adsense program for domains "allows domain name registrars and large domain name holders to unlock the value in their parked page inventory." After a ruling by the Northern District of Illinois a few weeks ago, Adsense may also allow plaintiffs' attorneys to unlock Google's value. Or, if that is ungenerous,

Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, I was working on trademarking some SEOmoz marks the other day, when I noticed that someone is trying to register "SEO" as a service mark. I was shocked. Apparently, the guy who's doing this has managaged to get all the way to the publication stage of the registration process. That means he has passed the preliminary review by the Trademark Office's )"TMO"( reviewing attorney. Currently,

Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, Welcome to Legal Monday! )It's still Monday, right?( My goal is to present a checklist of legal issues and trends surrounding affiliate marketing. I hope this will be interesting to both merchants and marketers. Affiliate marketing has unfortunately gained a bad reputation for being particularly high risk. While the industry is unlikely to ever be risk-free,