Attorneys Specializing in Internet / Tech Company Representation & On-Line Legal Issues

Our attorneys understand the Internet and technology. In fact, we represent some of the largest players in the Internet space concerning legal issues arising in the on-line world. Because we are a niche law firm, we know how to move the ball down the field in an efficient, cost-effective manner.

Founding Attorney Enrico Schaefer:  "Attorneys who specialize Internet law understand better than anyone the challenges which arise when legal issues occur in cyberspace.  Because the Internet is still relatively new, the application of traditional legal principles in areas of jurisdiction, venue, breach of contract, e-commerce, trademarks, copyrights, patents and a host of other issues is often challenging for both attorneys and courts.  As important, Internet attorneys must understand how the Internet works on both the network and software sides in order to investigate Internet law issues on behalf of their technology clients."

If you have a legal matter which arose on the Internet, you need an attorney who understands Internet law.  Contact an Internet attorney (mail to:  contact@traverselegal.com) today at Traverse Legal, PLC by calling international toll free (866) 936-7447.

Trademark and Copyright Violations on Twitter

Twitter has become a cesspool of trademark infringement and copyright infringement claims.  Essentially, people set up twitter accounts and add feeds from popular websites and blogs.  They brand the twitter account using the trademark protected logo of a third party and then see how much traffic they can drive.  If you or your company is experiencing brand-jacking on Twitter, contact one of our internet attorneys for more information about your rights and successful approaches to having the infringing content removed.  If you do not protect your trademark registrations and copyrights, who will?

Bill O'Reilly's Web Site Hacked: No Security = No Protection. Web site owner must inform registered users.

What does a web site owner have to do when they are hacked and user data is compromised? In many instances, the web site owner has to disclose the hack and data breach to its users.

Personal Data Protected By Google In Deal With Viacom

In response to a recent court ruling that Google turn over personal data of users to Viacom in litigation discovery, The parties have apparently reached a deal to protect user data. "We are pleased to report that Viacom, MTV and other litigants have backed off their original demand for all users' viewing histories and we will not be providing that information," Google commented in a post on the official YouTube blog in the US overnight.

Spammers Target CNN: Spoof emails disguised as CNN brand

Behind the Scenes: An inside look at CNN.com - Blogs from CNN.com

Earlier this week, a spam message purporting to be from CNN began circulating the Internet. We decided to blog about this to alert those of you who hadn’t yet received it to be on the lookout for it; and also to assure those of you who did receive it that the message was NOT, in fact, from CNN.

Massive Credit Card Fraud * Identify Theft Case Results In Indictments

FOXNews.com - 11 Charged in Massive Credit Card Fraud Case - Local News | News Articles | National News | US News

NEW YORK — The Department of Justice announced Tuesday the indictment of 11 people whom they say stole millions of credit and debit card numbers from major retailers in the nation's largest case of identity theft.

Is eBay responsible for the sale of pirated products on its auction site?

PC World - Business Center: Software Group Weighs Piracy Lawsuit Against EBay

EBay's VERO (Verified Rights Owner) program, in place since 1998, allows rights owners to contact eBay and have items removed from auction listings. "We can't be the experts on what's fake or not," Sharpe said in March. "We're not the experts on counterfeits."

YouTube User Data To Be Turned Over To Viacom in Discovery Order: Privacy Concerns Take Center Stage

A federal judge has ordered Google to turn over to Viacom its records of which users watched which videos on YouTube, the Web’s largest video site by far. The order raised concerns among YouTube users and privacy advocates that the video viewing habits of tens of millions of people could be exposed. But Google and Viacom said they were hoping to come up with a way to protect the anonymity of the site’s visitors.

Most Spam Sites Tied to a Handful of Registrars: Spammers Prefer Certain Registrars

Most Spam Sites Tied to a Handful of Registrars - Security Fix

New research suggests that more than three quarters of all Web sites advertised through spam are clustered at just 10 domain name registrars.

Cybersquatting, Fraud & Counterfeit Brands Continue to Proliferate on the Web

Traverse Legal Attorneys continue to track the continued growth of counterfeit brands and online fraud across the Internet.  Few companies appreciate the risk they face from scammers who mimic their brands online, then seek to use information gained from customers for fraudulent purposes.  In some cases, as is clear from the article below, the customers do not realize they have purchased counterfeit goods online.  Counterfeit components have turned up on U.S. Military, NATO, and NASA Space Shuttle, as well as Air Force One.  These counterfeit goods find their way into the system in a variety of ways and can dramatically harm companies seeking to protect their brands online.  It used to be that counterfeiters fit the profile of the street vendor in New York selling fake Gucci watches.  Sophisticated hackers have taken the counterfeit business online, to the detriment of any company seeking to protect its brand and perceived quality of goods and services online. 

Safe Harbor Certification: More Than Just a Privacy Policy

If your company collects personally identifiable information from Internet users via a website, you should have a privacy policy.  However, simply copying and pasting the numerous privacy policies that exist today may not be enough to protect your business.  In fact, if your business has not implemented the proper privacy protections, you may face liability, especially when dealing with individuals and business located outside the United States.

RSS Feeds: Does posting third-party sydicated content as an RSS feed on my web site create liability?

Question: "We publish RSS feeds on our community portal - EverythingLubbock.com. I wanted to make sure that there were no rules or restrictions about syndicating RSS feeds on our site."

Whistleblowers & Wikileaks: Using the First Amendment to Uncover Wrongdoing.

Wikileads » Interview: Attorney who represented a Wikileaks Facebook group officer against Bank Julius Baer explains flaws in the bank's legal logic

What about Wikileaks? Could they get in trouble for leaking a classified document - even when the document proved Bank Julius Baer was breaking the law?

“The Cayman Islands bank. What do those guys do?” Koltun said. “They provide anonymity for people who are hiding money from the IRS.”

Google To Allow Trademark Use In Adwords Adverertising

FT.com - Anger at Google's keyword shift

A sudden change in Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) 's policy on brand-name advertising in its search results has angered British advertisers, even as it opens up competitive opportunities in search marketing.

LegalZoom.com Faces Consumer Fraud Class Action Over Trademark Filing Fees

There are a lot of people out there wondering if Legal Zoom is a scam. Legal Zoom essentially takes publicly available forms, repackages them, provides non-legal consumer support fee and offers the form for sale to the public. For many people who are prone to 'do it yourself' and for those who don't know or want to pay an attorney, legal Zoom is a solid consumer option.  Here is the advertising banner for LegalZoom.com:

OFL has a comprehensive list of information posted on the internet about Legal Zoom which contains informational content, consumer reviews and other assessments of the Legal Zoom service and business model. Click Here.

The CAN-SPAM Act: Requirements for Commercial Emailers

The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act) establishes requirements for those who send commercial email, spells out penalties for spammers and companies whose products are advertised in spam if they violate the law, and gives consumers the right to ask emailers to stop spamming them.

Don't Let Web Developers Register Your Domain Name

Domain Names = Business Asset | Masterful Marketing: 8 Steps to Marketing Success

I recently had the pleasure of wrestling a new client’s domain name and web site from their current developer. It is not a pleasant experience but when you ask the developer to make changes and nine weeks later they haven’t even returned a phone call, something has to be done.

YouTube.com Traffic Hijack As A Result of Faulty Route Announcement

News & Announcements from the RIPE NCC

On Sunday, 24 February 2008, Pakistan Telecom (AS17557) started an unauthorised announcement of the prefix 208.65.153.0/24. One of Pakistan Telecom's upstream providers, PCCW Global (AS3491) forwarded this announcement to the rest of the Internet, which resulted in the hijacking of YouTube traffic on a global scale.

In this report we show how the events were seen by RIPE NCC's Routing Information Service (RIS) and how, in general, one can use the RIS tools to obtain hard data on network events.

The Class Action Filed Against Network Solutions & ICANN Relies on Erroneous Facts

The Internet are abuzz over the class action supposedly filed by the law firm Kabateck Brown Kellner, LLP.  Thus far, we have been unable to confirm that anything has been filed in the U.S. District Court, Central District of California as stated by class counsel. We were able to obtain a copy of the complaint, signed by counsel but with no case number, which you can view here.

The Anti-Phishing Consumer Protection Act of 2008

As originally posted by Mike Berkens at thedomains.com, Senate Members have proposed a bill to eliminate the practice of phishing e-mails and websites. 

Software Licenses Violate Consumer Protection Laws?

Consumer group claims software licences are unfair | OUT-LAW.COM

Software licences are obscure, unbalanced and unfair, according to the National Consumer Council (NCC), which has filed a complaint with the Office of Fair Trading (OFT). It wants the OFT to force software publishers to use clearer licences.

Wikileaks.org Subjected to Injunction Requiring Documents To Be Removed From Web Site

[See Court Documents Below]  - Thanks to Dave Zan who reported an interesting new lawsuit involving wikileaks.org (no longer live but available at http://88.80.13.160/wiki/Wikileaks) a “website dedicated to leaking documents that are “anonymous, untraceable, uncensorable.”  Time Magazine allegedly described the site by stating that it "could become as important a journalistic tool as the Freedom of Information Act."

College Web site posts sex gossip, hate, rumor raising first amendment and defamation concerns

First Amendment rights pushed to the extreme at juicycampus.com

College Web site posts sex gossip, hate, rumor - CNN.com

Under U.S. law, sites like JuicyCampus generally bear no responsibility for what their users post, said George Washington University law professor Daniel Solove, author of the recent book "The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet."

Data Security, DNS Server Corruption and Malware

DNS Inventor Warns of Next Big Threat - Desktop Security News Analysis - Dark Reading

Mockapetris -- who is also chief scientist and chairman of the board for network naming and address vendor Nominum -- says the recent research on corrupted DNS resolution servers by researchers at Georgia Tech and Google demonstrates yet another way the bad guys are attacking DNS to infect users. (See Hacking a New DNS Attack .)

Phishing Scam on TrofficZ Site

TrafficZ customers targeted by phishing scam » Domain Name News

According to an email by TrafficZ, customers of the parking company have been target of a phishing scam. The email entitled “TrafficZ | Domain Termination Notice” states that one of [the customer’s] domains has been deleted from [their] TrafficZ account and asks them to visit Traffiz.com within 72 hours in order for their account not to be blocked. The link in the email leads the user to TrofficZ.com instead of going to TrafficZ.com. The originators of this phishing scam are attempting to capture the usernames and passwords of the mislead users.

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Microsoft to buy Yahoo

It was announced today that Microsoft is proposing to buy Yahoo at a substantial premium over Yahoo’s current stock value.  This is an attempt to Microsoft to gain leverage in the search engine market against Google. 

Beijing company known for fakes applies for trademark, warns counterfeiters

A Beijing clothing market famous for selling fakes has started its own line of brand-name products, filed for trademark protection and has warned counterfeiters that it intends to enforce it's mark.

US-Based Company Privacy Policies May Not Comply With EU Privacy Laws

Many United States Companies with high-traffic web sites do considerable business in the European Union. Few US companies understand and appreciate that privacy laws are much stricter in the EU than the US. Privacy Policies need to cover both US privacy laws, as well as EU privacy laws. 

Microsoft Awarded Damages, Attorney Fees & Injunction Precluding Further Counterfeiting

Seattle Trademark Blog - Published by Michael Atkins- Microsoft Wins Most of Georgia Counterfeiting Case

In 2006, Microsoft Corp. brought suit in the Northern District of Georgia against Silver Star Micro, Inc., and its principal, Chase Campbell, for trademark and copyright infringement. On Jan. 6, Judge William Duffey, Jr., granted in large part Microsoft’s motion for summary judgment and imposed a permanent injunction against the defendants.

No Word On Sunrise Registration For Trademark Holders For .Me Domain Extensions

New ccTLD (Country Code Top Level Domains) for .me:  Domain registrar and Web hosting provider Go Daddy (godaddy.com) announced on Friday that it has been selected by the government of Montenegro as one of the three members in a joint venture that will be operating the new domain extension, .me. Go Daddy says interested customers will be able to register for the new domain extension for personal or business use later this year.  This continues the trend of small countries finding ways to monetize country code domain extensions. Instead of using the 2 digit extension .me to indicate country of origin, anyone can use the extension for any lawful (an perhaps unlawful) purpose.  Two digit domain extensions for countries are provided for under ISO 3166 is the International Standard for country codes and contemplated by RFC 1591, Domain Name System Structure and Delegation, March 1994.

Email Squatting The New Typosquatting?

A new cyber crime was recently brought to our attention. Everyone knows that cybersquatting is a rampant problem in the world wide web. What happens if cybersquatting spreads to other areas of the internet? What we are referring to is a new internet crime known as “email squatting.”

Google Adwords Campaigns Can Support Trademark Infringement Litigation

Our lawyers are often asked about whether a competitors use of their trademarks in Google adwords campaigns can result in legal liability.  The answer is that, in some circumstances, use of a competitors trademarks in Google adword advertising is unlawful.  While this is a very young area of law with few reported decisions, the Australian Gold v. Hatfield, 436 F.3d 1228 (10th Cir. 2006) case makes it clear that legal counsel should be consulted before starting any adwords campaign using some else's trademarks and threat letters are appropriate by trademark owners. Eric Goldman over at the Eric Goldman blog has some fun with 1-800 Contacts Google Adwords litigation filed last week. 

Sears Alleged To Have Disclosed Data In Violation of We Site Privacy Policy

Sears sued over privacy breach | InfoWorld | News | 2008-01-08 | By Robert McMillan, IDG News Service

The lawsuit seeks damages as well as an accounting by Sears to determine whether the Web site was misused by criminals. It was filed on Friday by New Jersey resident Christine Desantis, who is represented by KamberEdelson, a technology law firm. KamberEdelson is best known for its recent settlement with social networking site Facebook over its sending of unwanted text messages to recycled cell-phone numbers.

Cybersquatting UDRP Cases Continue to Rise

The number of complaints filed by real or alleged trademark owners against alleged cybersquatters under the “Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy” (UDRP) hit an all-time high in 2007, according to this data from the World Intellectual Property Organization, riding from1857 to 2156 in the last seven years.

Technorati Tags: icann, udrp, cybersquatting

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Data Discrimination Allegations Against Comcast

FCC Investigating Comcast Data Discrimination - News and Analysis by PC Magazine

Kevin Martin is raining on Comcast's CES parade.

On the same day Comcast CEO Brian Roberts gave the first ever CES keynote by a cable chief (with the Flight of the Conchords in tow, no less), the FCC chairman said at a separate CES panel that the commission would be investigating whether Comcast was involved in data discrimination.

ValueClick Moves Closer to End Of Consumer Protection Probe

ValueClick sees FTC probe resolved soon | Technology | Internet | Reuters

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Online marketing company ValueClick Inc said on Wednesday it was optimistic it would soon settle a Federal Trade Commission investigation into some of its Web sites, possibly in the first quarter.

In May, ValueClick said the FTC was looking into a few of its Web sites that promise consumers free gifts, as well as the way in which it drives traffic to such sites.

SEDO Auction Error on Music.mobi domain?

There is a lot of chatter going on right now concerning the SEDO auction of the music.mobi domain. Here is what one auction participant (Costa G Roussos) said about his alleged winning bid at the auction close:

I have been a part of this SEDO .mobi auction auction and I am the one responsible for the bid $611,000 for music.mobi. However I stopped bidding at the point where I realized that the NEW auction was a scam because the two bidders that were bidding me up were NEW bidders who were not even involved in the initial auction. The initial auction closed with me winning the last bid at $66,000. I received an invoice and 2 emails regarding the winning bid.

Google, Fair Use, and a Perfect 10

In the recent case of Perfect 10 v. Google, Perfect 10 sought relief from damages alleged against Google for its part in aiding users in viewing Perfect 10’s copyrighted work. Perfect 10 is a site that allows the viewing of nude models with a required subscription. Some of Perfect 10’s content has hosted on other sites that are copyright infringing by hosting the files. The reason that Perfect 10 went after Google is because Google’s search engine was displaying copyright infringing content that was being hosted by the websites that have leaked the Perfect 10 content. The whole story can be found here.

Tech-Lawyers For Technology Companies

Our Lawyers Know Technology.

• Are you a technology company paying legal fees to a lawyer who doesn't really 'get it'?
• If your lawyers don't understand technology, how can you expect them to competently protect your intellectual property, negotiate contracts or structure business deals with other tech-sector companies? 

At Traverse Legal, our lawyers represent a variety of technology companies -  and other businesses which rely on technology -  whose legal problems require specialized counsel.  Contact one of our lawyers today and we will change the way you value legal services.

Toshiba recalling laptop batteries

Toshiba is recalling 340,000 laptop batteries worldwide made by Sony Corp., the latest in a series of problems for the company.   The defect is not directly related to the problem behind last month's recall of Sony batteries by Dell Inc. and Apple Computer Inc., which cited concerns that the batteries could overheat and catch fire.  Dell asked customers to return 4.1 million faulty laptop batteries, while Apple recalled 1.8 million batteries worldwide.  In both those cases...more here.

Service of Process by Email

Internetcases.com has reported this interesting case from New York where a court allowed service of process by e-mail. Tishman v. The Associated Press, (Slip Op.) 2005 WL 288369 (S.D.N.Y. February 6, 2006).

Here is the synopsis provided by internetcases.com:

Plaintiffs Tishman and Wilkinson filed a lawsuit against defendant Pine, but had difficulty serving Pine with the summons. The plaintiffs tried the conventional methods of service under New York law, such as personal delivery. They even tried the "nailing and mailing" method by affixing a copy of the summons to the door of Pine's residence, then sending a copy in the mail.

Taking Control of ISP Contracts

Internet services providers (ISPs) face a number of unique and difficult issues on a daily basis. Upstream service providers regularly force complex contracts on downstream bandwidth providers which contain provisions which are neither reasonable nor necessary. Downstream ISP’s sometimes feel they have little leverage in negotiating those terms with large companies such as SBC, Verizon, MCI, Quest, AT&T, AOL, Sprint and other Tier 1 bandwidth providers.

Merging Technology and The Law

When your business is technology, you need lawyers who understand technology. These and other tech-savvy companies have chosen Traverse Legal for legal representation. Shouldn't you see what you are missing?

• Mica Networks
• WD Web Company
• MorePhotos.com
• TruckSkin, LLC
• Leelanau Communication, Inc.
• GLIMANorthwest
• Cybersports, Inc.
• HSA TEAM, Inc.
• The Intelligence Agency
• EveryWhereUgo.com
• Ten-Keys.com
• PM Technolgies
• GreatMichigan.com
• Traverse City Business News
• ForeWord Magazine
• AbsoluteMichigan.com

Contact a tech-lawyer for a free consultation. We will change the way you value legal services.

 

Client's Speak: Mica.net President

Mica.net's president has this to say about Traverse Legal's services:

1. I'm in the High Tech Service Internet service industry, not an easy business to be involved with.  Not only does my company have to consider regularity issues but often we are faced with situations related to the Internet were the law has not been developed.  Enrico Schaefer understands this complex industry and has experience with the technologies and how the law has evolved to cover the complex Internet related issues. Enrico spends the extra time to fully understand, my situation.  He makes himself readily available for questions or follow-up.

2. When I bring an issue to Enrico, I'm getting experience, depth and understanding.  Further, I feel I'm getting value and results from my legal dollar.

3. I've utilized law firms for over 10 years.  In that time, I can't say there were to many attorneys that I would go back except Enrico Schaefer.  I highly recommend Mr.. Schaefer's legal services.  He's competent, experienced and delivers the results we look for in General Counsel.