E-Commerce Law Briefs: Week of March 26, 2007

Nearly 70 percent of email from Asia is spam.

(Link: Almost 70 percent of all email from Asia is spam, a study reveals at Yahoo! News (UK))

Neiman Marcus has sued two domain name companies who allegedly registered domain names confusingly similar to Neiman Marcus trademarks. "The lawsuit [, filed in federal court in Denver,] accuses the companies of domain name tasting, or taking advantage of a five-day refund period to sample which of the addresses might generate traffic — and thus potential ad revenues, before committing to buying them."

(Link: Neiman Marcus Files Suit Over Misspelled Web Domain Names at Fox News)

A Yahoo click fraud settlement has been approved.  The settlement "requires Yahoo to pay nearly $5 million in attorney fees and give full credits to advertisers dating back to 2004."

(Link: Yahoo click fraud settlement gets final OK at CNET News)

Two Virginia high school students have filed a copyright infringement suit against the company hired by their school to catch cheaters. "The lawsuit, filed this week in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, [Virginia] seeks $900,000 in damages from the for-profit service known as Turnitin. The service seeks to root out cheaters by comparing student term papers and essays against a database of more than 22 million student papers as well as online sources and electronic archives of journals. In the process, the student papers are added to the database."

(Link: McLean Students Sue Anti-Cheating Service at washingtonpost.com)

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has issued an opinion broadly interpreted the protections set forth in the Communications Decency Act (CDA) as preempting state intellectual property claims against a website operator for content provided by third parties. Evan Brown’s analysis of the decision is posted here, while Eric Goldman’s analysis is posted here.

(Link: Adult site's legal battle could aid Web hosting services at ZDNet News)

E-Commerce Law Briefs is a weekly feature appearing each Friday afternoon on E-Commerce Law. Each week, E-Commerce Law Briefs will provide a brief summary and commentary on recent legal news affecting e-commerce businesses.

Technorati Tags:  spam, trademark infringement, copyright infringement, Neiman Marcus, Yahoo, click fraud, CDA