Miscellaneous – Attorney Evan Brown

May 18, 2020 Contracts, Miscellaneous, Trade Secrets

Independent contractor agreements: common mistakes to avoid

A lot of companies bring on independent contractors to develop content. They may be photographers, designers, writers, consultants, etc. who sign independent contractor agreements. Here are three common mistakes that you should not make if you are hiring an independent contractor.

Intellectual property ownership mistakes in independent contractor agreements

The first common mistake is to leave out language that ensures you as the hiring party own the intellectual property in the deliverables. Did you know that unless the contract specifically says otherwise, the independent contractor will retain ownership of the copyright in the deliverables? Many companies have been surprised to learn, after spending a lot of money on an independent contractor, that they do not own the rights in the content they thought they had paid for.

The agreement should have a work made for hire provision. And since the definition of work made for hire is specific, some things that the contractor may do will not qualify as work made for hire. So the agreement should also say that to the extent the deliverables are not work made for hire, the independent contractor assigns the intellectual property to the party that hired it.

Confidential information mistakes

The second common mistake that you should avoid in engaging with an independent contractor is being vague or loose when it comes to confidentiality. The independent contractor could learn a lot about your business – its vendors, its customers, its plans, and how the company operates. The confidentiality provision should adequately restrict how the independent contractor discloses that information or uses it outside of the engagement with the company. If not, that information may lose its trade secret protection. Or the contractor could take the information it learns about your company and use it while working for one of your competitors.

Indemnification mistakes

A third common mistake that you should avoid in independent contractor agreements is being silent on defense and indemnification. If a third party sues you over something that the independent contractor has done, you would likely want to look to the independent contractor to pick up the costs of defense and pay the amount of any judgment that results. Say, for example, the independent contractor copies a photograph from somewhere else and then provides that to you as his or her original work. If the true owner of the copyright in that work sues you for using the photo, it is only fair that you can turn to the contractor for relief. The agreement should say that.

About the author: Evan Brown is a technology and intellectual property attorney in Chicago. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram. Subscribe to his YouTube channel.

June 11, 2019 Miscellaneous

Amazon faces liability for assuming a duty to act, by sending email warning of hoverboard fires

Online marketplaces should take note – sometimes trying to do the right thing will create more legal exposure.

Plaintiffs tragically lost their home and suffered injuries in a fire caused by a hoverboard they bought through Amazon. They sued Amazon. Their negligence claim arose under Tennessee tort law, arising from the principle set out in Restatement (Second) of Torts § 324A, which states:

One who undertakes, gratuitously or for consideration, to render services to another which he should recognize as necessary for the protection of a third person or his things, is subject to liability to the third person for physical harm resulting from his failure to exercise reasonable care to protect his undertaking if (a) his failure to exercise reasonable care increases the risk of such harm, or (b) he has undertaken to perform a duty owed by the other to the third person, or (c) the harm is suffered because of reliance of the other or the third person upon the undertaking.

Plaintiffs claimed that defendant Amazon gratuitously undertook to warn the purchaser of the hoverboard (one of the plaintiffs) of the dangers posed by the hoverboard when it sent her an email outlining some of the dangers with hoverboards. Plaintiffs claimed that Amazon was negligent in that undertaking, and that the negligence caused plaintiffs harm.

The lower court granted summary judgment in Amazon’s favor, but the Sixth Circuit reversed the summary judgment order. It held that when Amazon chose to send the email to the one plaintiff, and in so doing sought to warn her of the dangers posed by the hoverboard, it assumed a duty to warn. There remained genuine issues of material fact as to whether Amazon breached that duty and whether any breach caused plaintiffs’ harm.

For instance, there was a genuine issue of material fact regarding whether Amazon’s failure to include certain information in the email amounted to negligence. The email did not inform hoverboard purchasers of any of the actions Amazon had taken to evaluate the dangers posed by hoverboards, including the findings and results of its internal investigation. The email did not inform hoverboard purchasers that the reported safety issues included a risk of fire or explosion. And the email did not inform hoverboard purchasers that Amazon had ceased all hoverboard sales worldwide.

And there was a genuine issue of material fact regarding whether the plaintiff read the email, and thereby could have acted in reliance on it. Though plaintiff had no specific recollection of reading the email, she “had a habit” of reading emails sent to her email address. She also testified that she would not have let the hoverboard enter or remain in her home had she known, among other things, that there had been 17 complaints of fires or explosions in the United States that involved hoverboards purchased on Amazon, that Amazon anticipated additional complaints, particularly during the upcoming holiday season, or that Amazon had ceased all hoverboard sales worldwide.

Fox v. Amazon.com, Inc., 2019 WL 2417391 (6th Cir. June 10, 2019)

August 28, 2018 Miscellaneous

Is an online marketplace liable for injuries caused by defective products?

The recent case of Eberhart v. Amazon.com, Inc. discussed the question of whether a man could recover from Amazon for severe injuries to his thumb he suffered when the glass of a coffee maker he purchased on Amazon shattered. The court held that Amazon was not liable.

No strict liability

In most states, when a product injures someone, that injured party can seek to hold anyone within the distribution chain “strictly liable” for the injuries. That means that the party is potentially liable regardless of whether it sold the product directly to the consumer, and regardless of whether the injury was foreseeable or was caused because of a lack of due care.

The court concluded that Amazon was not within the coffeemaker’s chain of distribution such that Amazon could be considered a “distributor” subject to strict liability. Amazon never took title to the coffee maker. Moreover, Amazon was better characterized as a provider of services. And finally, many other courts that had considered the question had concluded that Amazon was not strictly liable for defective products sold on its marketplace.

No negligence, breach of warranty or misrepresentation

Plaintiff’s other legal theories against Amazon failed as well. As for his negligence claims, the court held Amazon owed no duty to plaintiff because Amazon did not manufacture, sell, or otherwise distribute the allegedly defective coffeemaker to him. And as for claims sounding in breach of express warranty and misrepresentation, the court held that because Amazon did not make any statement about the coffeemaker (the seller generated that content), it could not be held liable.

Eberhart v. Amazon.com, Inc., 2018 WL 4080348 (S.D.N.Y., August 27, 2018)

About the Author: Evan Brown is a Chicago technology and intellectual property attorney. Call Evan at (630) 362-7237, send email to ebrown [at] internetcases.com, or follow him on Twitter @internetcases. Read Evan’s other blog, UDRP Tracker, for information about domain name disputes.

September 11, 2016 Miscellaneous

Remembering

August 3, 2013 Miscellaneous

Independent contractor’s email was key factor in finding he had apparent authority to bind principal

Defendant petroleum producer hired an independent contractor to negotiate oil and gas leases on its behalf. One such lease was with plaintiff, which the independent contractor negotiated in large part using the email account defendant issued to him. After the price of oil dropped, defendant would not pay on the lease. When plaintiff sued, defendant claimed its independent contractor did not have the authority to bind defendant to the lease in the first place.

The trial court disagreed with defendant’s argument that its independent contractor did not have apparent authority to bind the principal-defendant. Defendant sought review. On appeal, the Court of Appeals of Texas affirmed.

It held that a reasonably prudent person would have believed the independent contractor possessed the authority to contract on defendant’s behalf because defendant acted with such a lack of ordinary care as to clothe the independent contractor with indicia of authority.

Among the most important evidence concerning these indicia of authority was the fact that the independent contractor communicated using the email account under defendant’s domain name. The court noted that another court had held that giving someone a company email address does not, in and of itself cloak that user with carte blanche authority to act on behalf the company. “Were this so, every subordinate employee with a company e-mail address—down to the night watchman—could bind a company to the same contracts as the president.” CSX Transp., Inc. v. Recovery Express, Inc., 415 F.Supp.2d 6, 11 (D.Mass.2006)

But in this case, defendant knew of the independent contractor’s negotiations by email, and did nothing to disclaim that he lacked authority to bind defendant to the lease.

PanAmerican Operating, Inc. v. Maud Smith Estate, — S.W.3d —, 2013 WL 3943091 (Tex.App.-El Paso, July 24, 2013)

May 18, 2012 Governance, Miscellaneous, Privacy

Are network neutrality and freedom from government surveillance incompatible?

The FBI would like to see Congress amend CALEA (the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act). FBI director Mueller recently testified that his agency wants legislation that will assure internet service providers “have the capability and the capacity to respond” to court orders allowing the eavesdropping on a person’s internet communications.

CALEA currently requires that telecommunications companies expeditiously make their equipment, facilities, and services available to the government for wiretapping. Presumably, federal law enforcement would like to see this expanded to bind ISPs and other non-telecom entities.

We see a similar division of the world into telecom and non-telecom in the discussion of network neutrality. Many in favor of network neutrality laud the FCC’s efforts to bring ISPs into the agency’s scope of power to help ensure those providers of internet infrastructure do not discriminate on the basis of content source.

But do you see the potential problem here? If an individual is in favor of network neutrality and also wary of overzealous government wiretapping, he or she must be careful to not allow advocacy of federal power in one arena (enforcing network neutrality) to bleed over, even by analogy, to advocay of federal power in the other arena (surveillance). Participants in these discussions are advised to keep the ideological origins of the respective positions in mind.

May 11, 2012 Governance, Miscellaneous, Privacy, Spam

Why be concerned with social media estate planning?

The headline of this recent blog post by the U.S. government promises to answer the question of why you should do some social media estate planning. But the post falls short of providing a compelling reason to plan for how your social media accounts and other digital assets should be handled in the event of your demise. So I’ve come up with my own list of reasons why this might be good both for the individual and for our culture:

Security. People commit identity theft on both the living and the dead. (See, for example, the story of the Tennessee woman who collected her dead aunt’s Social Security checks for 22 years.) While the living can run credit checks and otherwise monitor the use of their personal information, the deceased are not so diligent. Ensuring that the dataset comprising a person’s social media identity is accounted for and monitored should reduce the risk of that information being used nefariously.

Avoiding sad reminders. Spammers have no qualms with commandeering a dead person’s email account. As one Virginia family knows, putting a stop to that form of “harassment” can be painful and inconvenient.

Keeping social media uncluttered. This reason lies more in the public interest than in the interest of the deceased and his or her relatives. The advertising model for social media revenue generation relies on the accuracy and effectiveness of information about the user base. The presence of a bunch of dead peoples’ accounts, which are orphaned, so to speak, dilutes the effectiveness of the other data points in the social graph. So it is a good thing to prune the accounts of the deceased, or otherwise see that they are properly curated.

Preserving our heritage for posterity. Think of the ways you know about your family members that came before you. Stories and oral tradition are generally annotated by photo albums, personal correspondence and other snippets of everyday life. Social media is becoming a preferred substrate for the collection of those snippets. To have that information wander off into the digital ether unaccounted for is to forsake a means of knowing about the past.

How big a deal is this, anyway? This Mashable article commenting on the U.S. government post says that last year about 500,000 Facebook users died. That’s about 0.0006% of the user base. (Incidentally, Facebook users seem much less likely to die than the general population, as 0.007% of the world’s entire population died last year. Go here if you want to do the math yourself.)

I say it’s kind of a big deal, but a deal that’s almost certain to get bigger.

February 1, 2012 Copyright, Defamation, Miscellaneous, Privacy, Right of Publicity, Section 230, Trademarks

Six interesting technology law issues raised in the Facebook IPO

Patent trolls, open source, do not track, SOPA, PIPA and much, much more: Facebook’s IPO filing has a real zoo of issues.

The securities laws require that companies going public identify risk factors that could adversely affect the company’s stock. Facebook’s S-1 filing, which it sent to the SEC today, identified almost 40 such factors. A number of these risks are examples of technology law issues that almost any internet company would face, particularly companies whose product is the users.

(1) Advertising regulation. In providing detail about the nature of this risk, Facebook mentions “adverse legal developments relating to advertising, including legislative and regulatory developments” and “the impact of new technologies that could block or obscure the display of our ads and other commercial content.” Facebook is likely concerned about the various technological and legal restrictions on online behavioral advertising, whether in the form of mandatory opportunities for users to opt-out of data collection or or the more aggressive “do not track” idea. The value of the advertising is of course tied to its effectiveness, and any technological, regulatory or legislative measures to enhance user privacy is a risk to Facebook’s revenue.

(2) Data security. No one knows exactly how much information Facebook has about its users. Not only does it have all the content uploaded by its 845 million users, it has the information that could be gleaned from the staggering 100 billion friendships among those users. [More stats] A data breach puts Facebook at risk of a PR backlash, regulatory investigations from the FTC, and civil liability to its users for negligence and other causes of action. But Facebook would not be left without remedy, having in its arsenal civil actions under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and the Stored Communications Act (among other laws) against the perpetrators. It is also likely the federal government would step in to enforce the criminal provisions of these acts as well.

(3) Changing laws. The section of the S-1 discussing this risk factor provides a laundry list of the various issues that online businesses face. Among them: user privacy, rights of publicity, data protection, intellectual property, electronic contracts, competition, protection of minors, consumer protection, taxation, and online payment services. Facebook is understandably concerned that changes to any of these areas of the law, anywhere in the world, could make doing business more expensive or, even worse, make parts of the service unlawful. Though not mentioned by name here, SOPA, PIPA, and do-not-track legislation are clearly in Facebook’s mind when it notes that “there have been a number of recent legislative proposals in the United States . . . that would impose new obligations in areas such as privacy and liability for copyright infringement by third parties.”

(4) Intellectual property protection. The company begins its discussion of this risk with a few obvious observations, namely, how the company may be adversely affected if it is unable to secure trademark, copyright or patent registration for its various intellectual property assets. Later in the disclosure, though, Facebook says some really interesting things about open source:

As a result of our open source contributions and the use of open source in our products, we may license or be required to license innovations that turn out to be material to our business and may also be exposed to increased litigation risk. If the protection of our proprietary rights is inadequate to prevent unauthorized use or appropriation by third parties, the value of our brand and other intangible assets may be diminished and competitors may be able to more effectively mimic our service and methods of operations.

(5) Patent troll lawsuits. Facebook notes that internet and technology companies “frequently enter into litigation based on allegations of infringement, misappropriation, or other violations of intellectual property or other rights.” But it goes on to give special attention to those “non-practicing entities” (read: patent trolls) “that own patents and other intellectual property rights,” which “often attempt to aggressively assert their rights in order to extract value from technology companies.” Facebook believes that as its profile continues to rise, especially in the glory of its IPO, it will increasingly become the target of patent trolls. For now it does not seem worried: “[W]e do not believe that the final outcome of intellectual property claims that we currently face will have a material adverse effect on our business.” Instead, those endeavors are a suck on resources: “[D]efending patent and other intellectual property claims is costly and can impose a significant burden on management and employees….” And there is also the risk that these lawsuits might turn out badly, and Facebook would have to pay judgments, get licenses, or develop workarounds.

(6) Tort liability for user-generated content. Facebook acknowledges that it faces, and will face, claims relating to information that is published or made available on the site by its users, including claims concerning defamation, intellectual property rights, rights of publicity and privacy, and personal injury torts. Though it does not specifically mention the robust immunity from liability over third party content provided by 47 U.S.C. 230, Facebook indicates a certain confidence in the protections afforded by U.S. law from tort liability. It is the international scene that gives Facebook concern here: “This risk is enhanced in certain jurisdictions outside the United States where our protection from liability for third-party actions may be unclear and where we may be less protected under local laws than we are in the United States.”

You have to hand it to the teams of professionals who have put together Facebook’s IPO filing. I suppose the billions of dollars at stake can serve as a motivation for thoroughness. In any event, the well-articulated discussion of these risks in the S-1 is an interesting read, and can serve to guide the many lesser-valued companies out there.

May 25, 2011 Miscellaneous

Ninth Circuit: FACTA does not apply to credit card receipts sent via email

Simonoff v. Expedia, Inc., — F.3d —, 2011 WL 1991211 (9th Cir. May 24, 2011)

Plaintiff sued Expedia under the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (“FACTA”). He was upset that the electronic receipt Expedia emailed him contained the expiration date of his credit card.

The district court dismissed plaintiff’s case and he sought review with the Ninth Circuit. On appeal, the court affirmed that the electronic receipt did not violate FACTA.

FACTA provides that “no person that accepts credit cards or debit cards for the transaction of business shall print more than the last 5 digits of the card number or the expiration date upon any receipt provided to the cardholder at the point of the sale or transaction.”

The restriction applies only to “receipts that are electronically printed.” The court found that the electronic receipt did not fall into this scope. It looked to the general notion of what it means for something to be “printed”:

“Print” refers to many different technologies—from Mesopotamian cuneiform writing on clay cylinders to the Gutenberg press in the fifteenth century, Xerography in the early twentieth century, and modern digital printing—but all of those technologies involve the making of a tangible impression on paper or other tangible medium.

Since the electronic receipt was not a “tangible impression on paper or other tangible medium,” it wasn’t “printed” as defined by FACTA.

(Copyright folks might be tempted to think about how well this logic holds up, given that copyright protection extends to creative works that are reduced to a tangible medium of expression, and there is no dispute that digital works are copyrightable.)

This opinion is in line with cases from the Seventh Circuit, including Kelleher v. Eaglerider and Shlahtichman v. 1-800 Contacts.