Terri Welles is an American actress and adult model. She first appeared on the cover of the May 1980 issue of Playboy, wearing a flight attendant costume to illustrate a pictorial on stewardesses. She subsequently appeared as a centerfold in the December 1980 issue and was named Playmate of the Year for 1981. Her original pictorial was photographed by Richard Fegley. Welles was the inspiration for the "Bobo Weller" character in the film Star 80.
MGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd., 545 U.S. 913 (2005), is a United States Supreme Court decision in which the Court ruled unanimously that the defendants, peer-to-peer file sharing companies Grokster and Streamcast, could be held liable for inducing copyright infringement by users of their file sharing software. The plaintiffs were a consortium of 28 entertainment companies, led by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios.
Nominative use, also "nominative fair use", is a legal doctrine that provides an affirmative defense to trademark infringement as enunciated by the United States Ninth Circuit, by which a person may use the trademark of another as a reference to describe the other product, or to compare it to their own. Nominative use may be considered to be either related to, or a type of "trademark fair use". All "trademark fair use" doctrines, however classified, are distinct from the fair use doctrine in copyright law. However, the fair use of a trademark may be protected under copyright laws depending on the complexity or creativity of the mark as a design logo.
In the United States, trademark law includes a fair use defense, sometimes called "trademark fair use" to distinguish it from the better-known fair use doctrine in copyright. Fair use of trademarks is more limited than that which exists in the context of copyright.
Greenberg v. National Geographic was a copyright lawsuit regarding image use and republication rights of National Geographic Society to their magazine in electronic form.
Perfect 10, Inc. v. Amazon.com, Inc., 508 F.3d 1146 was a case in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit involving a copyright infringement claim against Amazon.com, Inc. and Google, Inc., by the magazine publisher Perfect 10, Inc. The court held that framing and hyperlinking of original images for use in an image search engine constituted a fair use of Perfect 10's images because the use was highly transformative, and thus not an infringement of the magazine's copyright ownership of the original images.
Mattel v. MCA Records, 296 F.3d 894, was a series of lawsuits between Mattel and MCA Records that resulted from the 1997 hit single "Barbie Girl" by Danish-Norwegian group Aqua. The case was ultimately dismissed.
Initial interest confusion is a legal doctrine under trademark law that permits a finding of infringement when there is temporary confusion that is dispelled before the purchase is made. Generally, trademark infringement is based on the likelihood of confusion for a consumer in the marketplace. This likelihood is typically determined using a multi-factor test that includes factors like the strength of the mark and evidence of any actual confusion. However, trademark infringement that relies on Initial interest confusion does not require a likelihood of confusion at the time of sale; the mark must only capture the consumer's initial attention.
Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc. v. Bucci, 1997 WL 133313, was a court ruling at the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. The ruling was an important early precedent on the trademark value of a domain name on the World Wide Web, and established the theory that hosting a site under a domain name that reflected the registered trademark of a different party constituted trademark infringement.
Google, Inc. v. American Blind and Wallpaper Factory, Inc., No. 5:03-cv-05340, was a decision of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California that challenged the legality of Google's AdWords program. The court concluded that, pending the outcome of a jury trial, Google AdWords may be in violation of trademark law because it (1) allowed arbitrary advertisers to key their ads to American Blind's trademarks and (2) may confuse search-engine users initially interested in visiting American Blind's website into visiting its competitors' websites.
The case Brookfield Communications, Inc. v. West Coast Entertainment Corporation, 174 F.3d 1036, heard by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, established that trademark infringement could occur through the use of trademarked terms in the HTML metatags of web pages when initial interest confusion was likely to result.
Rescuecom Corp. v. Google Inc. 562 F.3d 123, was a United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit case in which the court held that recommending a trademark for keyword advertising was a commercial use of the trademark, and could constitute trademark infringement.
Playboy Enterprises, Inc. v. Netscape Communications Corp., 354 F.3d 1020 was a case regarding trademark infringement and trademark dilution decided by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The ruling addressed unauthorized use of trademarked terms when using web search data to determine the recipients of banner ads.
Network Automation, Inc. v. Advanced Systems Concepts, Inc., 638 F.3d 1137 was a court case decided on March 8, 2011, where the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that the use of a competitor's trademark as an Internet search advertising keyword did not constitute trademark infringement. In the case, Network Automation advertised their own competing product in search queries that contained Advanced Systems Concepts' "ActiveBatch" trademark. In determining whether trademark infringement occurred, the court evaluated factors relevant to the likelihood of customer confusion outlined in AMF Inc. v. Sleekcraft Boats and concluded that confusion was unlikely.
Bosley Medical Institute v. Kremer, No. 04-55962 is a case in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed, reversed and remanded the rulings of the United States District Court for the Southern District of California, holding that defendant, Michael Kremer, could not be held liable for trademark infringement or dilution for his use of the Bosley Medical Group's name in creating a website that was critical of the company's business practices.
Playboy Enterprises, Inc. v. Frena, 839 F.Supp. 1552 (1993) was a copyright infringement case decided by the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida, holding that the unauthorized online distribution of copied photographs was copyright infringement; and that removing a magazine's trademark from copied images was trademark infringement.
Jane Doe No. 14 v. Internet Brands, Inc., 767 F.3d 894 (2014), is a 2014 ruling at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on the legal liability of an Internet service provider for criminal offenses committed by its users. The ultimate ruling in the case has caused confusion over the amount of liability faced by service providers during such incidents.
Rosetta Stone v. Google, 676 F.3d 144 was a decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit that challenged the legality of Google's AdWords program. The Court overturned a grant of summary judgment for Google that had held Google AdWords was not a violation of trademark law.
Akamai Technologies, Inc. v. Limelight Networks, Inc., 797 F.3d 1020, is a 2015 en banc decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, on remand from a 2014 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court reversing a previous Federal Circuit decision in the case. This is the most recent in a string of decisions in the case that concern the proper legal standard for determining patent infringement liability when multiple actors are involved in carrying out the claimed infringement of a method patent and no single accused infringer has performed all of the steps. In the 2015 remand decision, the Federal Circuit expanded the scope of vicarious liability in such cases, holding that one actor could be held liable for the acts of another actor "when an alleged infringer conditions participation in an activity or receipt of a benefit upon performance of a step or steps of a patented method and establishes the manner or timing of that performance." In addition, the court held that where multiple "actors form a joint enterprise, all can be charged with the acts of the other[s], rendering each liable for the steps performed by the other[s] as if each is a single actor."
Amazon. com, Inc. v. Barnesandnoble. com, Inc., 337 F.3d 1024, was a court ruling at the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The ruling was an important early cyberlaw precedent on the matter of the technologies that enable e-commerce and whether such technologies are eligible for patent protection.
