The
plaintiff, Blake Field, took
a variety of affirmative
steps to get his works
included in Google’s search
results, where he knew they
would be displayed with
“Cached” links to Google’s
archival copy and he
deliberately ignored the
protocols that would have
instructed Google not to
present “Cached” links.
Google has long offered Web
publishers a way to opt out
of the caches if they don't
want archived pages to show
up in the Google caching
system. This did not stop
Blake Field from suing
Google.
Even more, the court
documents suggest that the
plaintiff had created
content for Google to cache
expressly for the purpose of
suing Google!
He
requested $2,550,000 in
statutory damages ($50,000
for each of fifty-one
registered copyrighted works)
along with injunctive relief.
Field contends that by
allowing Internet users to
access copies of his
copyrighted works, Google
violated Field’s exclusive
rights to reproduce copies
and distribute copies of
those works.
A Nevada federal court has ruled that
the cached versions of Web sites that Google stores and
offers as a part of many search results are not
copyright infringement, holding that Google’s use of the
copyrighted material was a fair use. The judge also
found that Google was entitled to the defence of "estoppel",
which stops a plaintiff from enforcing his rights if to
do so would be unfair on the defendant.
The ruling
potentially helps Google defend its library project "Google
Print" from a lawsuit brought by book publishers.
January 27, 2006:
Google cache not a breach of copyright, The Register:
"A US district court has ruled that Google’s cache feature, which allows
users to access snapshots of web pages taken when they were viewed by Google
robots, does not breach copyright in those web pages."
January 26, 2006:
US-Urteil: Google-Cache verstößt nicht gegen Copyright-Gesetze, Heise:
"Der US-Amerikaner Blake A. Field ist vor dem District Court von Nevada mit
seinem Versuch gescheitert, den Suchmaschinenbetreiber Google daran zu
hindern, Suchergebnisse seiner
Website im Cache zu speichern und verfügbar zu machen."
In
800-JR Cigar, Inc. v. GoTo.com, Inc.,et al., the US District Court of New Jersey
issued an opinion on whether the use of a trademark as a "keyword" constitutes
trademark infringement by a search engine. The plaintiff, JR Cigar,
is a prominent seller of cigars at discount prices and the owner of six federal
trademarks that utilize the formative “JR” or “JR Cigar.” The defendant, GoTo is
a pay-for-priority Internet search engine (a search engines that solicits bids
from advertisers for key words or phrases to be used as search terms, giving
priority results on searches for those terms to the highest-paying advertiser)
formed in 1997 (now Overture). Between April 1999 and June 2001, GoTo earned
revenue of about $345 from paid listings for “jr cigar” and related search terms.
The court adopted the reasoning of Government
Employees Insurance Co. v. Google Inc., 330 F. Supp. 2d 700, 73 USPQ2d 1212 (E.D.
Va. 2004) and held, among other things, that such sales by a search engine
constitute a "use" of the trademark "in commerce" within the meaning of federal
trademark statutes. According to the court GoTo made use of JR's trademark in
three ways:
• GoTo traded on the value of the marks when it accepted payment by competitors
of JR desiring to pay for prominence in search results.
• GoTo injected itself into the marketplace by placing the advertisers before
the natural search results list, acting as a conduit to steer potential
customers away from JR to JR's competitors.
• GoTo's "Search Term Suggestion Tool" identified which of JR's marks were
effective search terms, and then marketed them to JR's competitors.
The court concluded, however, that there are
disputed issues of fact that preclude a summary judgment ruling on the issue of
direct trademark infringement, in particular the likelihood of confusion
resulting from the sale of trademark terms as keyword search terms.
Google, America Online,
Microsoft and Yahoo have received demands from the Department of Justice (DOJ) to turn over data on
exactly what words and phrases their users were typing into the companies'
respective search engines over a one-week period. According to the government,
the data —which does not include customers' names or their PCs' IP addresses—is
needed to help it fight a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union
(ACLU) in an effort to stop the administration from reviving the controversial
COPA (Child Online Protection Act), which prohibits Web site operators from
posting sexually explicit content that could be harmful to minors, unless minors
cannot access the content. According to the DOJ, the records could bolster its
argument that a federal law is more effective than filtering software when it
comes to restricting access by children under the age of 18 to pornographic
content on the internet. Microsoft and Yahoo have admitted to complying,
at least in part, with the subpoenas, AOL has turned over a limited amount of
data. Only Google has decided to fight the DOJ's demands. Google Inc. co-founder
Sergey Brin said Google will fight the U.S. government for as long as it takes
to avoid handing over information on user searches.
The department's request to
force Google to comply with the subpoena is pending before a federal judge in
California. So now it is up to the U.S.
District Judge James Ware to rule over the privacy and civil
liberties concerns raised by the collection. A March 13 hearing has been set in
the case.
The government has not yet
requested or obtained any personally identifiable information from search
engines - at least to the knowledge of the public - but it might be only a
question of time, if Google does not prevail in court. Privacy concerns are not
the most important issues for the US government today. Just recently we saw the
disclosure that the Bush administration is using the National Security Agency to
eavesdrop on calls made by U.S. citizens—an action that many believe is in
violation of the Constitution. This is simply the latest in a long line of
morally and legally ambiguous efforts to investigate every little corner of
Americans' lives. Can users of search engines still expect privacy when they use
them?
Much is at stake for Google:
According to a poll a majority of those surveyed believe Google should not
release information to the government about its users' search habits, and more
than a third said they would even stop using the world's most popular search
engine if the company did so!
January 27, 2006:
Google won't give up in Justice Department case, CNet:
"Google plans to stand its ground against the Justice Department in its
request for the company's search data, co-founder Sergey Brin has promised.
January 26, 2006: McCullagh,
Declan,
Court date set for Google lawsuit, ZDNet:
"Google's attempt to fend off the government's request for millions of
search terms will move to a federal court in San Jose, Calif., on Feb. 27."
January 26, 2006: Kreye,
US-Regierung vs. Google, Süddeutsche Zeitung:
"Die amerikanische Regierung hat einen Drang zur absoluten Kontrolle."
January 19, 2006:
Google widersetzt sich US-Regierung, intern.de:
"In den letzten Jahren hat sich Google häufig sehr zugänglich für die
Wünsche und Bedürfnisse staatlicher Stellen oder auch ziviler Kläger
gezeigt."
In August
2005, Google was served
with a subpoena from the U.
S. Department of Justice (DOJ)
demanding disclosure of two
full months’ worth of search
queries that Google received
from its users, as well as
all the URLs in
Google’s index. Google
objected to the subpoena,
which started a set of legal
procedures that put the
issue before the Federal
courts (see:
1984 is now! Google fights
US Government). Google's response to
the Department of Justice's
motion to the court to force
the search engine to comply
with the subpoena, can be
found
here.
The ACLU urged the U.S.
District Court for the
Northern District of
California to rule in favor
of Google’s effort to block
the government’s subpoena
for information about its
customers’ online behavior.
“The government is not
entitled to go on a fishing
expedition through millions
of Google searches any time
it wants, just because it
claims that it needs that
information,” said ACLU
staff attorney Aden Fine.
“Anyone asking a court to
approve such an intrusive,
burdensome request must
explain why the information
is needed and for what
purpose. The government has
refused to make its purpose
known to the public or to
the Court, and Google has
rightly denied the
government’s demand for this
information.” See
Plaintiffs' Response to
Motion to Compel Google
In a declaration the Justice
Department rejected Google's
privacy concerns, noting
that the government
specifically requested that
Google remove any
identifying information from
the search requests. The
paper also stated that the
nature and depth of the
requested information would
do little to threaten
Google's closely guarded
trade secrets. Nonetheless,
government attorneys greatly
reduced the scope of their
request to only 50,000 Web
addresses and 5,000 search
terms.
After 90 minutes
spent hearing the DOJ and Google arguments on March 12, Judge Ware said, “It is
my intent to grant some relief to the government.” And so he did a few days
later: According to the ruling Google has to hand over 50,000 Web addresses
from its search index, but has not to reveal terms its
users had been searching for. In a
21-page ruling, Judge James Ware said the privacy
considerations of Google users led him to deny part of
the Justice Department's request.
"What his ruling means is that
neither the Government nor anyone else has carte blanche
when demanding data from internet companies," Nicole
Wong, Google's associate general counsel, said in a
statement on the company's website. The full comment is
at http://googleblog.blogspot.com/.
March 19, 2006:
Ruling in Google case a win
for privacy?, CNet:
"A federal judge's ruling Friday afternoon that Google
has to give the U.S. government a limited amount of
information it's seeking--but not search queries--was
immediately heralded by many bloggers as a victory not
just for the search giant, but for overall privacy
rights."
March 18, 2006:
Google Ordered to Submit Data for Child Pornography
Study, New York Times: "As expected, a federal judge ruled on
Friday that Google, the Internet search engine, must
turn over some search data including 50,000 Web
addresses to the government for a study of child
pornography online."
March 18, 2006:
Judge: Google must give feds limited access to records,
CNet: "In a move that alleviates some privacy concerns, a
federal judge granted part of a Justice Department
request for Google search data but said users' search
queries were off-limits."
March 18, 2006:
Gericht: Google muss keine Benutzerdaten aushändigen,
Heise: "Richter James Ware vom US-Bezirksgericht in San Jose hat entschieden:
Google muss dem Justizministerium eine Zufallsstichprobe von 50.000 im
Volltextindex der Suchmaschinen verzeichneten Adressen aushändigen."
March 15, 2006: Rötzer,
Florian,
Keiner gewinnt, der Datenschutz verliert, Telepolis: "Im Prozess, bei dem das US-Justizministerium Daten von Google fordert, hat
sich der Richter für einen schlechten Kompromiss entschieden."
March 15, 2006:
US-Regierung schränkt Datenanforderung an Google ein,
Heise: "Richter James Ware vom US-Bezirksgericht in San Jose hat gestern nach einer
anderthalbstündigen ersten Anhörung im Verfahren US-Justizministerium gegen
Google angedeutet, er werde die Herausgabe von einigen
Suchanfragendatensätzen anordnen."
A
study conducted by the
University of Connecticut
showed that "only 13% of the
public feel “extremely” or
“very” confident that the
search behavior collected by
Internet companies will
remain private."
Aaron Wall, a Search Engine Optimization blogger has been
sued by the SEO company Traffic-Power.com. Traffic-Power offers a search engine
placement program, providing customers with keywords, meta tags, advertising
pages, directory submission, link building strategies, online tracking and free
customer support with the promise of higher search engine placement. Many
customers were quite surprised when their sites dropped from search engines
after signing up for Traffic-Power services instead (Here is what you should try
if your sites has been removed from the index according to Google: First, you
need to make sure that you've removed any redirecting/spammy pages that were on
your site. Make sure that every junky page like that is completely gone before
you write, then you can send an email to webmaster@google.com with the subject
line "reinclusion request" and give us as much detail as possible about the
situation.") Several internet
publications such as
WebProNews published articles about this story. The Better
Business Bureau has
received over 100 complaints about Traffic Power in the last 36 months.
There's even an official hate website -
http://www.trafficpowersucks.com/. Traffic-Power.com sued their webmaster
Aaron Wall for defamation and the disclosure of company trade secrets. The
charge comes after comments were posted to his blog criticizing
Traffic-Power.com.
According to the
lawsuit, the false and defamatory information includes
but is not limited to the following:
a. Claims that the
search engine giant Google has banned and is banning
from its search engine listings websites of
Traffic-Power.com clients because of the search engine
optimization strategies used by Plaintiff.
b. Claims that
clients of Traffic-Power.com run the risk of being
banned from Google search engine listings if they use
Traffic-Power.com services;
c. Claims that
Traffic-Power.com plagiarizes its web page optimization
work;
d. Claims that
Plaintiff has started several new businesses under
different names to hide its identity;
e. Claims that two
new businesses started by Plaintiff are under
investigation by several agencies;
f. Claims that
and/or innuendo that Plaintiff is engaged in extortion
of its clients because of the techniques used by
Plaintiff in optimizing search engine listings;
g. Claims that
Plaintiff's business constitutes a scam and that clients
of Plaintiff are "victims;"
h. Claims that
Plaintiff stole from defendants;
i. Claims that the
business practices of Plaintiff constituted some kind of
actionable violation of the rights of its clients and
that the filing of a class action lawsuit against
Plaintiff by its clients was imminent; and
j. Claims that
Plaintiff formed and operates fake Internet forums on
search engine optimization to promote its services.
In a
reaction to
the lawsuit,
Google (in
this case
Matt Cutts)
gave the
following
information:
"I can
confirm that
Google has
removed
traffic-power.com
and domains
promoted by
Traffic
Power from
our index
because of
search
engine
optimization
techniques
that
violated our
webmaster
guidelines
at
http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html."
August 31, 2005: Kesmodel,
David,
Blogger Faces Lawsuit Over Comments Posted by Readers, Wall Street
Journal:
"In a legal case being watched closely by bloggers, an Internet company has
sued the owner of a Web log for comments posted to his site by readers."
September 28, 2005:
Koprowski, Gene,
Search Engine Placement Lawsuit May Chill Free Speech, E-Commerce Times:
"The stakes are high for the lawsuit. Traffic-Power.com is seeking to
restore its reputation, and hopefully, one day, be allowed to work with
Google.com again."
A
civil complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose by
KinderStart.com, seeks to be certified as a class action representing the
owners of all Websites blacklisted by Google's Internet-leading search
engine since January 2001. KinderStart, a Norwalk-based Web site devoted to information about
children, says it was dropped from Google's index a year ago without warning.
KinderStart said its traffic plunged by 70 percent after Google dropped it. The complaint accuses Google, as the dominant provider of Web searches,
of violating KinderStart’s constitutional right to free speech by blocking
search engine results showing Web site content and other communications. KinderStart contends that once a company has been penalized, it is
difficult to contact Google to regain good standing and impossible to get a
report on whether or why the search leader took such action.
July 2006 Update:
U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel for the Northern
District in San Jose dismissed a lawsuit brought by
Kinderstart.com that accused Google in March 2006 of "pervasive
monopolistic practices" that led to the denial of the
site's free speech rights, prevention and destruction of
competition, and predatory pricing. Kinderstart, a parenting search engine site, filed its suit after
suffering an approximate 70 percent drop in monthly
traffic after Google buried its visibility in search
results.
Google argued in court that its rankings were
opinions and therefore protected by the US
constitution's first amendment, which protects freedom
of speech. The Judge wrote in his decision that,
"Kinderstart has failed to allege any conduct on the
part of Google that significantly threatens or harms
competition." Kinderstart will have the opportunity to
amend all nine counts of its lawsuit.
July 13, 2006: Mills, Elinor,
Judge dismisses suit over Google ranking, ZDNet:
"A California judge on Thursday dismissed a Web site's lawsuit against
Google over its fall in the Google search index, but left the door open for
the lawsuit to be amended and refiled. "
July 3, 2006:
Rank outsider sues Google over zero score, The Register:
"Google has defended its right to rank web pages in any manner it likes in a
groundbreaking court case over its search engine results."
June 30, 2006: Kawamoto,
Dawn,
Suit over poor Google ranking may go forward, CNet:
"A federal judge in California hinted that a parenting Web site that's suing
Google over a poor ranking in the search giant's massive index would be able
to proceed with its lawsuit."
Judge Jeremy Fogel of
the US District Court for the Northern District of California heard arguments in
a lawsuit by KinderStart.com. Kinderstart, a Connecticut-based web parenting
site that features links to information about raising children, sued Google on
numerous counts for the ranking drop. Allegations include violations of
antitrust, free speech, unfair competition and defamation and libel laws.
Judge Fogel said he would take until at least the end of the year to render a
formal ruling on whether the case should proceed or be dismissed
About mid 2005 Avi Datner
learned that Yahoo's search results did not include his website partypop.com. In
November, he contacted Yahoo and told them that as the result of Yahoo's
excluding of partypop.com from its search results, he was loosing advertising
revenue. At about that time Yahoo confirmed that its search results were not
including partypop.com because someone at Yahoo had placed the website on a list
of web sites which were excluded from the search results. Yahoo did not explain
why the website was excluded.
In July Datner sued Yahoo,
claiming that Yahoo unfairly and illegally directs business away from him to his
competitors.
Datner v. Yahoo! Inc, Case No.
BC355217 (Cal. Superior Court
complaint
filed July 11, 2006)
Person, a
70-year-old attorney and businessperson who lives in New York and is running for
Attorney General in the November 2006 election, has sued Google in the U.S.
District Court - Southern District of New York. The complaint charges Google
with monopolization or attempted monopolization, along with a conspiracy to
monopolize under Section 2 of the Sherman Act (15 U.S.C. §2). In his opinion,
Google has a monopoly over "keyword targeted internet advertising." He claims
that Google has
removed a large number of search terms from the bidding process to force small
businesses to compete for higher-priced keywords.
Small advertisers are being forced out of the AdWords market, which makes
advertising more profitable for Google's largest advertisers (the well-known
established advertisers with the higher clickthrough rates like eBay).
Prior to
using AdWords, every customer must click on a box acknowledging that they agree
to the terms and conditions of Defendant's contract. These terms contain a forum
selection clause stating that disputes or claims arising out of the contract are
to be adjudicated in Santa Clara County, California. The court held the
forum selection clause to be valid and transfered the
dispute
to the Northern District of California at San Jose.
There have been a
lot of lawsuits concerning
linking, framing and search
engine issues in the last years.
In this section you'll find
short introductions into the
different cases and links to
news articles about it.