Narrowing the Definition of an Interactive Service Provider Under § 230 of the Communications Decency Act
Miree Kim Congress enacted § 230 of the CDA in response to two cases in the 1990s that set forth contrasting standards for defamation liability in suits against ISPs related to users’ activity on the Internet. In 1991, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York concluded that CompuServe, an ISP, was not liable for defamation because it simply enabled users to access the Internet. In 1995, the New York Supreme Court held that Prodigy, which provided a service comparable to CompuServe’s, should be held liable for defamation. Section 230 reflects Congress’s concern that imposing liability...
For Sale Signs in Cyberspace: Whether Federal Rule of Evidence 408 Should Be Adapted to the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy for Internet Domain Names to Bar Evidence of Offers to Settle from Arbitration Proceedings
R. Jonas Geissler In 1996, Panavision International, L.P., demanded that Dennis Toeppen stop using the domain name panavision.com because it was identical to the Panavision trademarked name. Toeppen replied that he had a right to the domain name, which he had registered with Network Solutions, Incorporated. If your attorney has advised you otherwise, he is trying to screw you. He wants to blaze new trails in the legal frontier at your expense. Why do you want to fund your attorney’s purchase of a new boat (or whatever) when you can facilitate the acquisition of ‘PanaVision.com’ (sic) cheaply and simply instead? This article...
What a Local Internet Company Can Do About Legal Uncertainty in Cyberspace: A Policy Proposal on How to Deal with the International Jurisdictional, Judgment Enforcement, and Conflict of Law Problems Posed by the Internet
Javier Beltran Commissioner Mozelle W. Thompson leads the U.S. delegation to the particular committees of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development currently working on international e-business guidelines in their attempts to overcome “the differences between many European countries’ systems of law and our own […] in developing consensus of difficult issues like choice of law and jurisdiction.” Accordingly, for the purposes of this very presentation, this project will first focus specifically on what domestic internet companies should know about jurisdiction, enforcement of judgements, and conflict of law issues in cyberspace when a dispute arises outside of the contractual sphere....
Why Domain Names Are Not Generic: An Analysis of Why Domain Names Incorporating Generic Terms Are Entitled to Trademark Protection
Sarah E. Akhtar As of the date of this paper, none of the previously listed companies have attained federal registration of their service marks. According to the results of a trademark search conducted on December 17, 1999 using Thomson & Thomson, both DRUGSTORE.COM and VITAMINS.COM are the subjects of pending applications in the United States Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”). PETSTORE.COM had not yet filed an application for registration. However, under new office policies, the USPTO may refuse registration to each company’s “domain name trademark” on the grounds that it is generic. While the USPTO follows traditional trademark law for determining whether any trademark can obtain...
On-Line Copyright Infringement Liability for Internet Service Providers: Context, Cases & Recently Enacted Legislation
Mark E. Harrington How fast has the Internet grown? At the end of the Reagan-Bush era, just six years ago, the world of cyberspace consisted of fewer than 50 World Wide Web sites, most of them used by computer scientists and physicists. Today the Internet is no longer just for researchers, and it is expected that within five years international commerce on the Internet could reach $3.2 trillion. The fact is that in the past 72 months the number of Internet users has risen from hundreds to millions of users, and is estimated by some experts to reach perhaps a...