yahoo – Attorney Evan Brown

October 11, 2019 Cybersquatting, Trademarks

Yahoo successor does not prevail in bid to obtain ymobile.com domain

Oath, Inc., the successor to Yahoo! Inc., filed an action under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) against a domainer that acquired ymobile.com earlier in 2019. The split 3-member FORUM panel denied the complaint, finding that Oath failed to demonstrate that the respondent lacked rights or legitimate interests in the disputed domain name, and failed to show it registered and used the disputed domain name in bad faith.

On the question of rights or legitimate interests, the panel found that the respondent’s purchase and sale of the domain name comprised of the generic term “mobile” prefixed by “y” was legitimate, so long as the respondent did not intend to capitalize on Oath’s YMOBILE mark, which is registered in Japan. The panel accepted the respondent’s assertion that it had no notice of the YMOBILE mark prior to acquiring the disputed domain name.

Regarding bad faith registration and use, the panel similarly found that the respondent was not targeting the Y! or YMOBILE mark, and that it had no knowledge of the YMOBILE mark’s existence prior to acquiring the disputed domain name.

One of the panelists dissented, arguing that the disputed domain name should have been transferred. He emphasized how the respondent was using the disputed domain name – which the panel found was identical to a mark the complainant owns – to display pay-per-click ads for goods and services competitive with the complainant’s. Some of the ads, for example, were for online games and downloadable software. And on the issue of bad faith, this panel member observed that although the respondent claimed to not know of the complainant’s YMOBILE mark, a simple web search would have revealed it.

Oath Inc. v. Mira Hold, No. FA 1909001858330 (Forum, October 8, 2019)

March 23, 2011 Spam

Yahoo not liable for blocking marketing email

Section 230 of Communications Decency Act (47 U.S.C. 230) shields Yahoo’s spam filtering efforts

Holomaxx v. Yahoo, 2011 WL 865794 (N.D.Cal. March 11, 2011)

Plaintiff provides email marketing services for its clients. It sends out millions of emails a day, many of those to recipients having Yahoo email addresses. Yahoo used its spam filtering technology to block many of the messages plaintiff was trying to send to Yahoo account users. So plaintiff sued Yahoo, alleging various causes of action such as intentional interference with prospective business advantage.

Yahoo moved to dismiss, arguing, among other things, that it was immune from liability under Section 230(c)(2) of the Communications Decency Act. The court granted the motion to dismiss.

Section 230(c)(2) provides, in relevant part, that “[n]o provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of … any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable.”

Plaintiff argued that immunity should not apply here because Yahoo acted in bad faith by using “faulty filtering technology and techniques,” motivated “by profit derived from blocking both good and bad e-mails.” But the court found no factual basis to support plaintiff’s allegations that Yahoo used “cheap and ineffective technologies to avoid the expense of appropriately tracking and eliminating only spam email.”

The court rejected another of plaintiff’s arguments against applying Section 230, namely, that Yahoo should not be afforded blanket immunity for blocking legitimate business emails. Looking to the cases of Goddard v. Google and National Numismatic Certification v. eBay, plaintiff argued that the court should apply the canon of statutory construction known as ejusdem generis to find that legitimate business email should not be treated the same as the more nefarious types of content enumerated in Section 230(c)(2). (Content that is, for example, obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing).

On this point the court looked to the sheer volume of the purported spam to conclude Yahoo was within Section 230’s protection to block the messages — plaintiff acknowledged that it sent approximately six million emails per day through Yahoo’s servers and that at least .1% of those emails either were sent to invalid addresses or resulted in user opt-out. On an annual basis, that amounted to more than two million invalid or unwanted emails.

October 20, 2010 Electronic Discovery, Privacy

Stored Communications Act protects Yahoo email account from subpoena

Chasten v. Franklin, 2010 WL 4065606 (N.D.Cal. October 14, 2010)

Plaintiff sued some corrections officers at the prison where her inmate son was killed. She learned in a deposition that one of the defendants had a Yahoo email account. So she sent a subpoena to Yahoo seeking all the email messages sent from that account during a period of more than two years.

Defendant moved to quash the subpoena, arguing that disclosure of the email messages would violate his rights under the Stored Communications Act (SCA). The court granted the motion to quash.

Subject to certain specifically-enumerated exceptions, the SCA (at 18 U.S.C. 2702(a) and (b)) essentially prohibits providers of electronic communication or remote computing services to the public from knowingly divulging the contents of their customers’ electronic communications or the records relating to their customers. The court found that no such exception applied in this case. Citing to Theofel v. Farey-Jones, it held that compliance with the subpoena would be an invasion of the specific interests that the SCA seeks to protect.

September 29, 2010 Copyright

Downloading a song is not a performance under the Copyright Act

“Performance” under Copyright Act requires “contemporaneous perceptibility”.

U.S. v. ASCAP, — F.3d —, No. 09-539 (2d Cir. September 28, 2010).

Yahoo and RealNetworks commenced a proceeding to determine the rate of a “blanket license” they would pay to ASCAP to perform musical works over the internet (e.g., through streaming services). (As an aside, such actions are brought in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York pursuant to an antitrust consent order entered way back in the 1940’s.)

ASCAP wanted as big a piece of the pie as possible and argued that it should be paid royalties for songs that are downloaded. Remember, ASCAP only collects fees for the public performance (not the distribution or copying) of musical works. So it asked the court to find that each time a user downloads a file, that should be treated as a performance, and thus ASCAP should be entitled to payment.

The district court disagreed that a download is a performance as defined by the Copyright Act. ASCAP sought review with the Second Circuit. On appeal the court affirmed, agreeing that a download is not a performance.

The analysis is straightforward: The Copyright Act grants copyright owners the right, among other things, to perform the copyrighted work publicly. Under the Copyright Act, to “‘perform’ a work means to recite, render, play, dance, or act it, either directly or by means of any device or process.” Since a download plainly is neither a “dance” nor an “act,” the court had to determine whether a download of a musical work fell within the meaning of the terms “recite,” “render,” or “play.”

The court looked to dictionary definitions of the terms “recite,” “render” and “play” to observe that all three actions entail contemporaneous perceptibility. It found that music is neither recited, rendered, nor played when a recording (electronic or otherwise) is simply delivered to a potential listener.

In more detail, the court said that:

[music downloads] are simply transfers of electronic files containing digital copies from an on-line server to a local hard drive. The downloaded songs are not performed in any perceptible manner during the transfers; the user must take some further action to play the songs after they are downloaded. Because the electronic download itself involves no recitation, rendering, or playing of the musical work encoded in the digital transmission, we hold that such a download is not a performance of that work, as defined by [the Copyright Act].

So ASCAP’s piece of the pie was not as big as it wanted.

May 8, 2009 Section 230

Has Section 230 immunity passed its apex?

Barnes v. Yahoo!, Inc., No. 05-36189, 9th Cir. May 7, 2009

Yesterday’s decision from the Ninth Circuit in Barnes v. Yahoo is kind of a big deal. Jeff Neuberger observes that Section 230 took a hit. Characterizing it differently, Thomas O’Toole called it a nice win for online publishers. I’m thinking that the halcyon days of robust Section 230 immunity may be on the wane.

Barnes alleged that her ex-boyfriend did some pretty rotten things using various Yahoo services. Since I think my mom reads my blog I won’t elaborate on Prince Charming’s shenanigans. But if the allegations are true, one can understand why Barnes would be mad. Simply stated, they involved nude photos and men looking to cavort showing up where Barnes worked.

Barnes contacted Yahoo and asked it to take the offending content down. Folks there said they would. Months later, when the content remained online, Barnes sued Yahoo for negligent undertaking and promissory estoppel.

The district court dismissed Barnes’ claims, holding that 47 U.S.C. 230 protected Yahoo because, according to that section, “no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”

It’s no big surprise that the appeallate court affirmed the lower court on the question of negligent undertaking. Barnes’ claim was that Yahoo was negligent in undertaking to remove the content. Since the removal of content is one of the quintessential functions of a publisher, it would contravene Section 230 to hold Yahoo liable for that.

The more intriguing part of the case comes from the court’s reversal on the question of promissory estoppel. Yahoo’s breach of an alleged promise to remove the content was of a different nature than the act of removing the content. “Promising is different because it is not synonymous with the performance of the action promised.” Liability arising from failing to live up to that promise was outside the scope of Section 230. In other words, pursuing Yahoo for breaking its promise to take down the offending content did not treat it as the publisher or speaker of that content.

This holding seems to be another chip away at Section 230 immunity. Smart intermediaries (e.g. website operators) are likely to communicate less now with individuals who feel aggrieved, because the intermediary may fear that anything it says could be construed as a breakable promise putting it at risk for liability.

November 13, 2007 Contracts

Purported John Kerry ex-flame’s suit against Yahoo tossed

I’m going back in time a little bit to pick up on an unreported September 5, 2007 decision by a New York state trial court in the case of Whitnum v. Yahoo! [2007 WL 2609825].

Plaintiff Whitnum is the author of the book Hedge Fund Mistress, and also the owner of the website of the same name. Yahoo, who hosted the site, is alleged to have shut down the site for 8 hours on August 19, 2004, which was the same day that the book was mentioned on the front page of the Boston Herald.

Whitnum claimed that this caused her to lose out on $125,000 in revenue, so she sued Yahoo for that amount. Yahoo moved to dismiss, however, citing to its hosting terms of service which provided that it had the right “at any time and from time to time to modify or discontinue, temporarily or permanently, the [hosting] Service.” The terms of service also provided, among other things, that Yahoo would not be liable for any indirect or consequential damages resulting from a customer’s inability to use the service.

The court granted the motion to dismiss. It rejected Whitnum’s arguments that she should be allowed to file an amended complaint alleging intentional conduct or gross negligence, instead finding that her basis for saying that Yahoo may have shut down her account to silence her story about having dated John Kerry was mere speculation.