Professional Documents
Culture Documents
• What is intellectual
property? Property that
can be protected under
federal copyright,
trademark or patent law or
common law forbidding
unfair competition,
including misappropriation.
Copyright
• Results:
TotalNEWS.com settled out of court and
agreed to stop framing the news
organizations’ stories
The organizations dropped the lawsuit
Most lawyers who advise Web site clients
urge them to avoid using framing links
Washington Post v. TotalNEWS.com
TotalNew
s Web
site
today
Deep links
• Microsoft’s www.seattlesidewalk.com, a
guide to the city of Seattle, included deep
links to the page in the Ticketmaster Web
site where surfers could buy tickets to
Seattle concerts.
• These direct links allowed surfers to
bypass the Ticketmaster home page and
other Ticketmaster pages that contained
advertising.
Ticketmaster v. Microsoft
• Result:
Parties settled out of court in January 1999
Microsoft agreed to link only to Ticketmaster’s
home page.
Some scholars thought deep links could be
seen as violation of the Lanham Act, as part of
federal trademark law that makes it illegal for
businesses to knowingly create confusion over
a trademark
Deep links
• Typical case
Joe, owner of Web site A, builds a home page
and because he’s such a fan of Coca-Cola, he
uses the trademarked Coke can on the page.
That’s risky enough, but he compounds the
problem by providing a link from his home
page to his favorite porn page.
Coke may sue, charging that Joe has
tarnished the Coke trademark by linking it to
porn.
Links to illegal content
• Questions:
Is linking to illegal content more like reporting
where something illegal is happening or more
like doing something illegal?
What are the implications of the ruling for
mainstream journalists?
Universal v. Reimerdes
• Questions:
Is linking to illegal content more like reporting
where something illegal is happening or more
like doing something illegal?
What are the implications of the ruling for
mainstream journalists?
Bottom line