Santa Clara Law in the News
June 19, 2008
Business Wire
Santa Clara University School of Law adjunct professor, Eugene Hyman '77, and the State of California Superior Court for the County of Santa Clara will be honored with the2008 United Nations Public Service Awardat a ceremony on June 23 in New York City. Hyman and the court are being recognized in the category of 'Improving transparency, accountability, and responsiveness in the Public Service' for 'Juvenile Delinquency Domestic Violence and Family Violence Court.' "Santa Clara School of Law is very proud of our alumnus and faculty member, Judge Gene Hyman, for the wonderful contributions he and his colleagues on the court have made and for the recognition given by the United Nations," says Donald J. Polden, Dean of the Santa Clara School of Law. "Judge Hyman, over the span of his career, epitomizes the Santa Clara Law graduate-a lawyer of competence, conscience, and compassion."
June 16, 2008
Lawyers US
AThe use of trademarks sold as "keywords" by Google and other search engines to trigger "sponsored links" on the side of a search page continues to be a hot button issue for any business with a website - including law firms. The legal question is whether a trademark is infringed if a competitor buys the trademark and uses it to trigger an online advertisement for its own company, such that a consumer searching for the trademark will pull up an ad for the competitor. Courts are split over the answer. "Trademark-driven advertising is an integral part of many lawyers' practices," said Eric Goldman, an assistant professor at Santa Clara University School of Law and author of the Technology & Marketing Law Blog at http://blog.ericgoldman.org.
June 12, 2008
The San Francisco Chronicle (California)
The new chief judge of the federal appeals court in San Francisco dabbles as a paintball warrior, computer gamer and scuba diver. A political conservative and free-speech libertarian, he led a successful campaign in 2001 to stop court officials in Washington, D.C., from monitoring the Internet use of federal judges and court employees. On Wednesday, Judge Alex Kozinski was on the hot seat after the Los Angeles Times disclosed that a Web site of his contained numerous sexual photos and videos - showing nudity and bestiality - while he was preparing to preside over an obscenity trial in Los Angeles. Longtime court commentator Gerald Uelmen, a law professor at Santa Clara University, said the episode raises "a question of judgment" but doesn't appear to be grounds for removal from the case. Amar had a similar assessment. "There's lots of stuff that's embarrassing to each of us, that we wouldn't want the public to know," he said. "Maybe this was an indiscretion in judgment ... but I don't see how that bears on his fitness to handle cases that involve that kind of subject matter."
June 8, 2008
The Post-Crescent
It's estimated that about 100 times each year in the United States, a mother murders her child, according to Cheryl Meyer, a psychology professor at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. Meyer and co-author Michelle Oberman, a law professor at Santa Clara University, researched more than 200 cases from 1990 to 1999 involving mothers who killed their children. Oberman said she was drawn into the subject of mothers who kill their children while teaching at Loyola University in Chicago in the late 1980s. She got a call from an attorney friend who had a 14-year-old client indicted for murder after her baby's death. The more she investigated the subject, the more cases she found. What started as one scholarly article on neonaticide in a law journal became the genesis of the first book Oberman wrote with Meyer, Mothers Who Kill Their Children: Understanding the Acts of Moms from Susan Smith to the 'Prom Mom'. "There was almost nothing in the medical literature at the time," Oberman said.
May 29, 2008
Mobile Register
Germans are reeling over a recent string of cases involving mothers accused or convicted of killing their babies. The grisly killings have come at a time when the country's low birthrate has left the government searching for ways to encourage people to have more children. Christian Pfeiffer, director of the Criminological Research Institute of Lower Saxony in Hannover, said relentless media coverage to such scandals has helped draw attention to the age-old problem of child abandonment, leading to more outreach programs for troubled new mothers. Michelle Oberman, a law professor at Santa Clara University in California and co-author of a new book, When Mothers Kill, said Germany's search for effective ways to prevent infanticide is more progressive than the response in the U.S. American mothers kill more children each year than German mothers, but Oberman cautioned against relying too heavily on statistics. From abortion laws to health care access, she said the social conditions that drive a mother to kill are too complicated to quantify.
May, 2008
ABA Journal
If a generic term is used to trigger ads, there's no legal problem. But if the ads are triggered when a user types in a trademarked term like Continental Airlines, that constitutes trademark infringement, even when the trademark does not appear in the text of the ad, according to many businesses and trademark attorneys. The threshold issue is whether using a trademark to trigger an online ad constitutes using the mark in commerce. Such a "use in commerce" is a prerequisite for finding infringement under the Lanham Act, the federal trademark law. But because the Lanham Act, first passed in 1946, was not written with the Internet in mind, it does not explicitly state whether using a mark to trigger an online ad constitutes using the mark in commerce. "The statute is inherently ambiguous," says Eric Goldman, director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University School of Law. Nor have the courts been able to resolve it. "The courts are pretty evenly split down the middle on this," says Goldman. "There are about 10 decisions on each side."
May 23, 2008
Guardian Unlimited
The internet company Yahoo has postponed its annual meeting as its board struggles to escape a shareholder uprising led by the billionaire corporate raider Carl Icahn. The potentially rowdy gathering in California was due to be held on July 3 but Yahoo has put it off to an unspecified date "expected to be around the end of July 2008". "I actually think this helps Icahn, because it gives him more time to drum up support for his efforts," Stephen Diamond, a professor of corporate law at Santa Clara University, told Silicon Valley's Mercury News. "But it may also give Yahoo more time to work out some kind of alternate transaction with Microsoft."
May 18, 2008
Los Angeles Times (California)
In the days leading up to the California Supreme Court's historic same-sex marriage ruling Thursday, the decision "weighed most heavily" on Chief Justice Ronald M. George -- more so, he said, than any previous case in his nearly 17 years on the court. Santa Clara University law professor Gerald Uelmen, who has closely followed George's court tenure, said "the biggest surprise" of the marriage ruling was that George favored it. Uelmen said George must have done "some real soul searching."
May 17, 2008
Business Wire
The Honorable Phyllis Hamilton, U.S. District Court Judge and a Santa Clara University School of Law alumna addressed Santa Clara Law's class of 2008 at a commencement ceremony held today in the University's Mission Gardens. At the ceremony, 302 J.D degrees and 9 LL.M degrees were awarded. Of the J.D. degrees, 147 were awarded to women and 166 were awarded to students of color. The LL.M. (Masters of Laws) degrees included three programs, U.S. law for foreign lawyers, intellectual property law, and international and comparative law.
May 16, 2008
Los Angeles Times (California)
The California Supreme Court struck down the state's ban on same-sex marriage Thursday in a broadly worded decision that would invalidate virtually any law that discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation. Lawyers on both sides of the debate said they were uncertain how a victory for the proposed November initiative -- which both sides predict will qualify for the ballot -- would affect gay couples who marry during the next several months. University of Santa Clara law professor Gerald Uelmen, who has closely followed the state high court for decades, said he was "blown away" and "very surprised" by the ruling. "The court is exerting some leadership here, and I think it needs to be said that it is a new role for the court," Uelmen said. "This has not been a court that has been willing to stick its neck out and lead the way on cutting-edge issues like this that involve such strong political feelings."
May 16, 2008
National Public Radio
In its 4-3 decision, the court said marriage was a basic civil right and that the state constitution guarantees that right to heterosexual and gay Californians. Santa Clara University law professor Margaret Russell says the patchwork of marriage laws across the nation could lead to difficulties for same sex couples. "It may lead to litigation if there are couples from California who want to move to other states or be legally recognized as couples in other states and those states refuse."
May 8, 2008
San Jose Mercury News (California)
Craigslist vs eBay: clash of cultures. Independent observers such as Steve Diamond, a business law professor at Santa Clara University, suggest that Newmark and Buckmaster are driven by mostly by self-interest. If they don't care about making more money, Diamond says, why are they attending investment conferences?
May 2, 2008
The Washington Post
Apple, maker of the iPod media player, said yesterday that it would start selling movies through its iTunes online store the same day they are released on DVD. With digital downloads and rentals, the studios still need to figure out how to make movies available without jeopardizing the more lucrative DVD sales, said Steve Diamond, an entertainment-law professor at Santa Clara University in Santa Clara, California. At the same time, the studios want to put films online to stem the demand for pirated copies, he said.
April 30, 2008
The Dallas Morning News
When several men broke into a Waxahachie truck terminal last October, tied up a security guard at gunpoint and crashed a semi-trailer loaded with $1 million in cigarettes through the front gate, they didn't know one of them was a snitch for the Dallas County Sheriff's Department. A sheriff's detective who was in contact with the informant that night said he didn't know the crime would turn into an armed robbery. But the informant was surprised to be arrested months later, saying the detective knew for weeks what he was planning. Some local and national law enforcement experts say the Waxahachie case is a prime example of the unregulated and sometimes messy relationships between police and informants that can lead to abuses. In the Waxahachie heist, the thieves had to drive the stolen truck past a manned security gate. Had the security guard been shot during the robbery, the Sheriff's Department would have had some difficult questions to answer, experts say. "When there is a known risk of harm to innocent victims, that crosses the line," said Gerald F. Uelmen, a Santa Clara University law professor and former federal prosecutor. Mr. Uelmen, the law professor, said most police departments spell out in writing what informants can and cannot do.
April 17, 2008
Los Angeles Times (California)
Despite a top prosecutor's prediction that executions could resume this year in California -- at a rate of one a month -- the state still faces significant legal hurdles before it can send more inmates to their deaths, legal experts said Wednesday. Santa Clara University law professor Ellen Kreitzberg agreed that the challenges "certainly are not going to be re-solved quickly."
April 11, 2008
The San Francisco Chronicle (California)
Microsoft Corp.'s takeover bid for Yahoo Inc. has yet to succeed, but that hasn't stopped preparations for what would be the next step - the regulatory battle. "With Microsoft, there will be greater attention paid to antitrust than with other companies," said Steve Diamond, a law professor at Santa Clara University.
April 5, 2008
San Jose Mercury News (California)
In many DNA cases, eyewitness identifications are proven wrong. Some studies have shown that 80 percent of exonerations by DNA have come in cases where the victim identified the suspect. Experts say victims finger the wrong person because of stress, suggestibility and sometimes a poor facility with faces of people of other racial backgrounds. In this case, however, both victim and suspect are Latino. "We are very fallible," said Gerald Uelmen, a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law who sits on a state commission urging safeguards to prevent wrongful convictions. "Eyewitness identification is given much more weight than it deserves," Uelman says.
March 31, 2008
Business Wire
Santa Clara University School of Law was once again named one of the top 100 law schools in the country by U.S. News & World Report. The annual graduate school ranking also recognized the law school as having one of the most diverse student populations. "We are proud that Santa Clara University's law school continues to be appreciated on a wider spectrum for our commitment to educating future lawyers of competence, conscience, and compassion and for preparing them for leadership roles in the legal profession and in our communities," said Donald J. Polden, dean of the law school. The Intellectual Property Law program at the Santa Clara School of Law also ranked high, coming in among the top 10 in the country. Other California law schools recognized for their strong IP programs are University of California, Berkeley, and Stanford University. "Our strong faculty, staff and student communities, our deep curricular offerings, and our location in the heart of the Silicon Valley combine to make Santa Clara Law School a very special place to study IP and high tech law," said Eric Goldman, assistant professor and academic director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara. According to the survey, 92.5 percent of SCU law graduates were employed nine months after graduation.
March 30, 2008
San Jose Mercury News (California)
Cookie Ridolfi remembers a time not long ago when the Northern California Innocence Project was in trouble. Ridolfi and Linda Starr launched the program at the Santa Clara University School of Law in 2001 to help wrongfully convicted prison inmates regain their freedom. But by 2004, the non-profit program had lost the state funding it needed to continue. She ended up with two fairy godmothers. Denise Foderaro read the story and showed it to her husband, Frank Quattrone, the investment banker who just two days earlier had been found guilty of obstruction of justice. His conviction was overturned in March 2006. "My own experience with the justice system was a real eye opener and inspired my involvement with the project," Quattrone said Thursday night at the Innocence Project's inaugural awards dinner in San Jose. Quattrone now serves as chair of the project's advisory board and received its Leadership Award at the dinner, which raised more than $1 million. "What happened to me pales in comparison to what happened to all the exonerees" in attendance that night, Quattrone said. "This award belongs to them."
March 24, 2008
Lawyers USA
The fact that Second Life members can make "visual representations of goods throws a monkey wrench into the le-gal analysis," Duranske explained. "There is no question that in the real world, if someone made shoes with real laces and a swoosh on the side, they would be knocking off Nike shoes. But Nikes for an avatar - are those knock-offs, or something new called virtual shoes? Or a picture of shoes?" Virtual products might constitute an entirely new product from the standpoint of a trademark analysis, he said. Eric Goldman, a professor of cyberspace law and the Academic Director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University School of Law, agreed. Trademark law "is designed to protect consumers from making the wrong choices in the marketplace. If my avatar drinks a virtual Coke in a virtual world, maybe that doesn't affect my marketplace choices whatsoever," he said. "Displaying a can of Coke in the virtual world is not different than discussing it in an editorial context on a website. But what if someone starts selling it?"
March 5, 2008
Traffic World
The Long Beach clean truck plan on Monday ran into just the kind of trouble the city was trying to avoid. The American Trucking Associations said plans by ports violate federal law preempting local regulation of the routes and services of licensed motor carriers. The ATA points to a Supreme Court decision on Feb. 20 striking down a law in Maine requiring tobacco shippers to use only delivery companies that verify recipients' age. In that case, the Court said that federal law preempts state actions connected with "rates, routes or services," even if the connection is indirect. Steve Diamond, a law professor at Santa Clara University in Northern California, says the decision does not apply in the California ports' case. The Port of Los Angeles is simply attempting to protect its financial interests as a participant in harbor trucking, he said.
March 4, 2008
Consumerist
Lifestyle Lift claims it's a "minor one-hour procedure with major results," but a lot of customers who have paid for the procedure have been left unhappy, and they've consequently posted reviews about it on a plastic surgery review blog called RealSelf. Lifestyle Lift has sued RealSelf, claiming trademark infringement, and now RealSelf has countersued, claiming Lifestyle Lift padded RealSelf's site with shill reviews. Santa Clara University School of Law professor Eric Goldman, who has advised RealSelf on the case, posts about the issue on his personal blog: No matter how many times I see it--and in the Internet era, I see it all too frequently--I always shake my head in disappointment and frustration when a company uses trademark law to lash out against unflattering consumer reviews. To these companies, trademark law is a cure-all tonic for their marketplace travails, and trademark doctrine is so plastic and amorphous that defendants have some difficulty mounting a proper defense. As a result, all too frequently, the threat of a trademark lawsuit causes the intermediary to capitulate and excise valuable content from the Internet.
March 3, 2008
Pacific Shipper (California)
The American Trucking Associations says a recent Supreme Court decision in Maine will help turn an expected ATA challenge of Los Angeles harbor trucking rules into a "slam-dunk" case. Steve Diamond, a law professor at Santa Clara University in Northern California, disagrees. Diamond, who has been following the evolution of the clean-trucks program at the Los Angeles-Long Beach port complex, says the ATA's case is "over the backboard."
February 23, 2008
Los Angeles Times (California)
Commissioners recommended that the state resume funding for the Northern California Innocence Project at Santa Clara University Law School and the California Innocence Project at Cal Western Law School in San Diego, the primary legal groups in the state fighting to overturn wrongful convictions. The Legislature in 2001 allocated $1.6 million over two years to provide lawyers to assist inmates with innocence claims. The legal assistance funding was eliminated in 2003 because of state budget cuts. To date, the two Innocence Projects "have succeeded in helping to exonerate 11 people, two based on DNA evidence and nine on other grounds. Each exoneration has saved the state the cost of housing an innocent person," the commission said. The group also pointed out that the 1996 exoneration of Kevin Green, an Orange County man who spent more than 15 years in prison for the assault on his wife and murder of their unborn child, led to the conviction of the real murderer and rapist. The report said the two Innocence Projects are now actively investigating 288 cases and have a backlog of 700 cases. Santa Clara University law professor Gerald Uelmen, the executive director of the commission, said that Assemblymen Jose Solorio (D-Santa Ana), chairman of the Public Safety Committee, would introduce legislation embodying the group's reform proposals and others.
February 7, 2008
BackStage
After coming within a whisker five years ago of merging, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists and the Screen Actors Guild are all but severing their ties, a move that could escalate competition between the unions and possibly force some 44,000 dual cardholders to choose between the two. "I think it's unfortunate," Stephen Diamond, a labor attorney and associate professor of law at Santa Clara University in California, said of the potential split. "They have, obviously, common members in the industry and potentially significant leverage over the large conglomerates. This has to be a national battle, not a Hollywood battle." (Diamond was once a candidate to be SAG's national executive director.)
February 4, 2008
The New York Times
Standing between a marriage of Microsoft and Yahoo may be the technology behemoth that has continually outsmarted them: Google. ''Google can tap into all of the ill will that Microsoft has created in the last couple of decades on the antitrust front,'' said Eric Goldman, director the High-Tech Law Institute at the Santa Clara University School of Law.
February 2008
Inside Counsel
A parts company wasn't happy with the performance of an eBay listing company and in late 2005 posted a four-part article on his Web site titled "Special Report: You Gotta Be Berserk to Use an eBay Listing Company! The Whole Story." The article detailed his problems with Bidzirk, as illustrative of the shortcomings of eBay listing companies. Bidzirk was unhappy with the article and took legal action. Because Smith's online article used Bidzirk's name and logo without authorization, the company sued Smith in January 2006 for, among other things, trademark infringement. According to Eric Goldman, who teaches IP law at Santa Clara University School of Law, using trademark law to suppress online criticism is not always successful because courts are becoming less friendly to such lawsuits.
February 2008
Inside Counsel
In People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals v. Doughney, the 4th Circuit held that a parody site titled "People Eating Tasty Animals" was engaging in commerce because it contained links to third-party commercial Web sites. The court came to this conclusion even though the parody site derived no revenue from these links. In Taubman Co. v. Webfeats, the 6th Circuit held that a Web site was engaging in commerce because it had a mere two links to commercial sites. Cases such as this "have turned the use in commerce element into a bizarre link-counting witch hunt," according to Eric Goldman, who teaches IP law at Santa Clara University School of Law.
January 31, 2008
Technology Daily
A handful of senators are considering whether granting the FTC "civil-penalty authority" could bolster enforcement capabilities in the areas of data security, telephone records fraud and malicious, secretly installed computer programs. Santa Clara University technology law professor Eric Goldman questioned the idea of expanding FTC authority. "What's the problem that needs to be fixed?" he asked. On the adware front, the agency "has been able to do a great deal with the tools they've already got," he said.
January 16, 2008
Washington Internet Daily
Marketing in Web 2.0 "isn't all that different" from Web 1.0, adhering to the same principles of truth in advertising and keeping consumer trust, said Eric Goldman, director, University of Santa Clara Law School High Tech Institute. But Web 2.0 efforts are leveraging social networks on the premise that consumers more often respond to friends' recommendations than to ads, he said. With services such as Facebook's much-maligned Beacon (WID Dec 6 p3), "the goal is to get friends to recommend things to friends, rather than trying to insert a message into a dialogue or experience people don't want interrupted," he said. In general, Beacon and its ilk that use "credibility transference" are "surprisingly unregulated," he said. So far, the law has had a "tough time distinguishing between communication among friends and communication about friends with a business component," he said. "The real challenge is from consumer reactions" to social networks being "pimped out" and "when the marketer gets a hand caught in the cookie jar" consumers lose trust, he said. "The Beacon incident is going to combine with a few other Facebook missteps to put a long term dent in its brand and relationship with consumers," he said.
January 15, 2008
The Virginian-Pilot Edition
For years, Braxton Berkley was exposed to chemicals while helping build top- secret military planes at Lockheed Martin's storied Skunk Works plant. He says those chemicals made him ill - but his case reached a dead end at the state's highest court.
The California Supreme Court has refused to hear his appeal not on legal merits but because four of the seven justices cited a conflict of interest because they have stock in oil companies that provided some of the solvents at issue in the case. The court's action has been the talk of the appellate bar, leaving lawyers on both sides in disbelief and law professors scratching their heads for a precedent. "It's an odd one," Santa Clara University law professor Gerald Uelmen said.
January 14, 2008
Washington Internet Daily
Amazon.com must pay Basis Technology for its role in launching Amazon's Japanese e-tailer, the Appeals Court of Massachusetts ruled. An early investor in Basis, Amazon must give up its seat on the Basis board and its position as a preferred shareholder under the ruling. Basis can resume using the Amazon.com name and logo in its promotional materials and will get more compensation from Amazon, Basis said. 1-800 Contacts sued LensWorld.com in U.S. District Court, Salt Lake City, for buying "1800Contacts" as a keyword. Santa Clara University Law Professor Eric Goldman called the suit "ironic" since 1-800 Contacts "routinely" has bought others' trademarks as keywords, as in the WhenU.com case (WID Feb 36 p5). In that case, 1- 800 Contacts lost in the Second Circuit, which rejected its claim on keyword advertising because WhenU's use didn't meet the standard for "trademark use in commerce." The ruling has "spawned no less than a half-dozen Second Circuit-based court rulings that keyword advertising isn't a trademark use in commerce," Goldman said. The company was "so concerned" when Utah legislators banned the practice that it "helped push the legislators to back down," he said.
January 11, 2008
Inside Bay Area (California)
Leading judges and scholars rendered a grim verdict Thursday on how well the California justice system is carrying out the ultimate punishment as a state commission began an unprecedented review of the death penalty. From California Chief Justice Ronald George, a death penalty supporter, to law professors who oppose capital punishment, the theme was consistent -- the state's death penalty system is a mess. Ellen Kreitzberg, a Santa Clara University law professor, provided a study of nearly 800 California death sentences that shows the current death penalty may be too "expansive." Former Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Gerald Kogan said the overly broad list of crimes that qualify for the death penalty is the root of California's bloated death row.
December 13, 2007
BackStage
Actors' Equity Association and the Screen Actors Guild will renegotiate their most lucrative contracts with producers sometime in 2008. Steve Diamond, who teaches labor relations at the Santa Clara University School of Law and is a former candidate to be SAG's national executive director, said it will be crucial for SAG to present a united front. "In a time period when SAG really has the opportunity to learn and to prepare, [it] seems to be caught up in internecine battles over other issues," he said. "There's a train heading straight for you, and that train is going to get bigger and bigger and move faster and faster. You have to be ready to meet it." Diamond noted that, like SAG, the WGA membership has been politically divided into East and West camps, but quelling those disagreements was instrumental to building their strength. "In the year running up to the writers guild strike, you did not see the level of acrimony and division within the [WGA] leadership that is currently affecting SAG. I think the failure to resolve those issues could have a significantly negative effect on their ability to meet the challenge that the industry presents," Diamond said. "You just wonder why the new [SAG] officers and staff leadership hasn't been able to provide the direction that the organization needs to resolve those issues, because that's what they're really hired to do."
November 21, 2007
San Jose Mercury News (California)
Shares in power producer Calpine tumbled nearly 50 percent Tuesday amid news that it had cut its estimated value by $900 million, raising questions about its ability to fully pay creditors and complicating its emergence from bankruptcy. Shareholders of common stock "stand last in line" in a bankruptcy reorganization, explained Stephen Diamond, a business law professor at Santa Clara University. "Restructuring is maybe a polite word for slash and burn," said Diamond, referring to the layoffs and sales of assets. He likened May's role to a surgeon who "takes off an arm in order to save the patient."
November 20, 2007
Los Angeles Times (California)
The California Supreme Court on Monday called for a constitutional amendment to ease the backlog in the state's death penalty system, which takes an average of 17 years to execute a condemned convict -- twice the national average. Santa Clara University law professor Gerald Uelmen said he had serious concerns about the "tremendous impact" the proposal could have on the state-funded agencies that represent death row inmates. "They will need a lot more staff," and that will be costly, he said.
November 11, 2007
Company Counselor
On November 6, 2007, the Association of Corporate Counselhosted a seminar in Palo Alto, CA on the issues facing ecommerce 2.0. Eric Goldman, who is an Assistant Professor and Director of High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University School of Law, said that there were several ways to verify a person's geography while transacting on the Internet. First, ask the user to self report. Once it is known where the user is, the person can be treated under the laws of that area. Another method to determine geography is to do an IP address analysis.
November 8, 2007
Back Stage East
To an understand the writers strike and the current state of affairs in Hollywood, one first has to understand how labor and management define new media. As far as the Writers Guild of America is concerned, the Internet, cell phones, and MP3 players are new ways of broadcasting traditional content. To the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, they represent nothing less than a fracturing and reordering of the entertainment industry. Stephen Diamond, an associate professor of law at Santa Clara University in California and a former candidate to become SAG's national executive director, told Back Stage in July that the unions will not significantly change how they get paid in the next rounds of negotiations. But, he added, "can they open the door and lay the groundwork for ... the battle over the next decade?" And for all of the producers' legitimate concerns over the rising costs of traditional media, Diamond said, the new systems of distribution are going to make the companies more profitable: "Digitalization creates more stable markets because it makes content available to much larger audiences.... The key question for the guilds is, Are they positioned to exploit or leverage their unique contributions to this environment?" He added, "You can get overly pragmatic to avoid a confrontation and miss the opportunity to reset the debate.
November 5, 2007
Business Insurance
As technology continues to change the way companies do business, more insurers are broadening their coverage to help meet the expanding legal exposures companies face as a result of publishing content online, especially those not considered traditional media or publishing outlets. Some typical legal pitfalls include defamation, publicity and privacy violations, copyright infringement and trade secret misappropriation, said Eric Goldman, an assistant law professor and director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University law school in California. Mr. Goldman said a company's liability has less to do with the technology it uses than the content it publishes. ``There is a disconnect,'' Mr. Goldman said. ``People are publishing content when they don't see themselves as content publishers. They think it's all about technological risks when it's all about content risks.''
November 5, 2007
Lawyers USA
A fantasy baseball company has a First Amendment right to use players' names and statistics, the 8th Circuit has ruled in a closely-watched case. Eric Goldman, a professor of cyberspace law at Santa Clara University School of Law and Academic Director of the High Tech Law Institute, said the court reached the correct result. "The situation is not that different from a book publisher who would publish a compilation of statistics about players. The law wouldn't treat the [use of the] individual stats as violations of copyright law, even though the book was published in a commercial context," he said.
October 26, 2007
National Public Radio
All Things Considered
These days, the buzz in Silicon Valley is all about user-generated content. YouTube, Facebook, Wikipedia, MySpace - sites that are interesting because of what the users put on them. Some of the leading thinkers in the world of technology believe the days of the professional journalist, critic, writer, moviemaker, musician maybe numbered. Professor Eric Goldman (Law, Santa Clara University): Congress, in 1996, said that Web sites that are publishing third-party contents - such as the content of their users - are not liable the way that a newspaper would be liable for publishing submissions from its readers.
October 18, 2007
San Jose Mercury News (California)
Former California Attorney General John Van de Kamp blasted law enforcement groups and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Wednesday for blocking legislation aimed at protecting defendants from convictions for crimes they did not commit. California used to provide funding for groups like the Northern California Innocence Project, based at Santa Clara University's Law School, but now such groups rely entirely on private donations. A single case can cost the Innocence Project hundreds of thousands of dollars to re-examine evidence and pursue appeals, said project director Kathleen Ridolfi, a Santa Clara law professor. She said her staff rejects hundreds of applications for every person they agree to help.
October 16, 2007
Washington Internet Daily
The issue of Web sites' liability for display of banned user-generated content will get a full-court rehearing at the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Two of three panel judges said Roommate.com acted as an information content provider, and thus was liable, for requiring users to answer questionnaires developed by the site that led some users to state preferences in violation of the Fair Housing Act (WID July 17 p7). The Electronic Frontier Foundation, Lycos and Eric Goldman, director of the High Tech Law Institute at the Santa Clara University School of Law, filed a brief with the court for a rehearing, saying the decision violated safe harbor provisions in Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. The panel decision "shall not be cited as precedent by or to this court or any district court of the Ninth Circuit," the Friday notice said.
October 15, 2007
Business Wire
Civil rights champion and one of the most recognized lesbian leaders in the country, Elizabeth Birch, will be honored Oct. 25 by the Santa Clara University School of Law during its fourth annual Celebration of Diversity Gala. Donald J. Polden, dean of SCU's law school, said the University is fortunate to have outstanding graduates such as Birch. "Through her work as an LGBT and civil rights activist and former leader of the Human Rights Campaign, Elizabeth serves as a role model for our students. It is most appropriate that the law school honors her and recognizes her many contributions to law and society at an event that highlights the importance of a highly diverse legal profession."
October 13, 2007
The UCL Practitioner
Thursday's National Law Journal had a detailed summary of a roundtable discussion called "Blogging, Scholarship and the Bench and Bar," which took place on September 17, 2007 at Santa Clara University School of Law.
October 8, 2007
Concurring Opinions
An Example of a Well-Planned and Run Single Topic Conference Eric Goldman and Santa Clara University School of Law just conducted Trademark Theoretical and Empirical Inquiries. What impressed me was that the conference brought in a range of views and had little redundancy despite the single topic approach. In a single topic format the danger of a dead panel seems high. Still, Prof. Goldman and the staff of Santa Clara's High Tech Law Institute did a great job avoiding that possibility and put on an informative, great conference.
October 8, 2007
ComputerWorld
A federal judge last week ruled that Target.com, the home page of retailer Target Corp. , must be accessible to blind persons under California laws. The ruling could extend state and federal disabilities statutes to the Internet, experts said. According Eric Goldman, director of the High Tech Law Institute at the Santa Clara University School of Law , the judge's order concluded that ADA statutes require retailers' Web sites to help blind patrons shop in a company's physical stores.
October 4, 2007
The Washington Post
Critics of a tentative labor contract between General Motors and the United Auto Workers are stepping up a long-shot bid to derail the agreement, even as some GM workers began voting to ratify the deal. A group of former UAW board members tapped Stephen F. Diamond, an associate professor at the Santa Clara University School of Law, to analyze the $35 billion health-care trust fund for retired workers. Diamond criticized the convertible note because he said it ties the fund too heavily to GM's stock price, carries too many restrictions and fails to protect health-care benefits in the event of a GM bankruptcy. Diamond said the risk isn't being adequately disclosed to UAW members before the ratification vote, which he said could violate federal and state laws that cover the distribution and sale of financial securities.
October 2, 2007
Financial Times - Asia Edition 1
Letter to the editor from Dr. Stephen Diamond.
Sir, It is helpful that in your report "UAW could hold top GM stake" (October 1) you have called attention to the decision to fund the new healthcare trust fund for auto workers - a so-called Voluntary Employment Benefit Association (Veba) - with a face-value Dollars 4.4bn convertible bond issued by General Motors. In advance of their forthcoming vote either to approve or to reject the contract proposal negotiated by the leadership of United Auto Workers union, GM's rank-and-file workers deserve a full explanation of this complex financial instrument.
September 21, 2007
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Society must return to the idealism that characterized the desegregation of Little Rock Central High School in 1957 to address race-related problems that continue to affect education today, said a panelist during a town hall forum on race and education Thursday night. "There was an extraordinary amount of courage but also an extraordinary amount of idealism that came out of that period," said
September 8, 2007
Bulldog Reporter's Daily Dog
A lawsuit targeted one of the ways that Google makes money from its widely used search engine. Under the practice, a search request for a specific business like American Blind & Wallpaper triggers commercial links from competitors that bid for the right to show ads under specific terms, or "keywords." Google receives a commission when visitors click on the advertising links, which accompany the main search results. Eric Goldman, an assistant professor at Santa Clara University's School of Law, believes American Blind's experience may discourage similar suits. "This case reiterates that keyword-related lawsuits can be a sucker's bet," Goldman wrote on his blog.
September 5, 2007
Los Angeles Times (California)
A coalition of national nonprofit groups asked the Justice Department on Tuesday to investigate and suspend an FBI employee who was found by a jury to have falsified evidence against a man who served 12 years in prison before being exonerated by DNA evidence. Tuesday's action marked the first time that the National Innocence Network, made up of organizations at 31 law schools, "has ever asked that a law enforcement officer be suspended and investigated for misconduct that led to a wrongful conviction," said Kathleen Ridolfi, executive director of the Northern California Innocence Project at Santa Clara University Law School. Ridolfi's letter to the Justice Department said that "in light of these extraordinary developments," the innocence network was asking that Miller be the subject of a formal investigation, "which could result in the termination of his employment with the Bureau. Indeed, given the security and sensitivity of Miller's assignment, we urge you to consider suspending him pending the outcome of the investigation." "We are confident that the FBI and the Department of Justice will conclude . . . that it is inconceivable that our nation's homeland security will rely on the intelligence analysis of a man found in a court of law to be a liar and an evidence fabricator," Ridolfi added.
September 2007
InsideCounsel
Porn Site Loses High Stakes Infringement Suit Against Visa. In Perfect 10 v. Visa, the most recent decision, the company sued five financial institutions, including Visa International Service Association and MasterCard International Inc., all of whom processed credit card payments to the allegedly infringing Web sites. Perfect 10 alleged that providing this service attracted secondary liability for copyright infringement because the processors materially contributed to the infringing activities. Professor Eric Goldman, director of the High-Tech Law Institute at the Santa Clara University School of Law, says "The 9th Circuit should take a hard look at its entire body of cyberlaw if it wants to provide the type of useful guidance we expect from appellate courts," he says. "All three [Perfect 10] results were perfectly sensible, but that leaves us relying strictly on common sense to determine what the law is, which isn't very comforting."
August 30, 2007
PR Newswire
Frank Quattrone completed a sweep of his legal battles as a federal district court judge in New York ordered obstruction charges dropped, following the terms of a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) the former investment banker and the government entered into one year ago. The order caps a string of legal victories for Mr. Quattrone, who now has prevailed in all criminal and regulatory actions, and remains free to continue his business career without any restrictions or penalties. Mr. Quattrone serves on the Advisory Board of the Northern California Innocence Project, a free legal clinic at Santa Clara University Law School for indigent, innocent prisoners. "My experience with the justice system opened my eyes to the horrific plight of wrongfully convicted prisoners, most of whom don't have the resources to regain their freedom by proving their innocence," Mr. Quattrone said. "The Innocence Project is working hard to help exonerate the innocent and to remedy flaws in the justice system that cause wrongful convictions."
August 13, 2007
Lawyers USA
A new Seattle-based company, Avvo, Inc., aspires to provide a universal national lawyer-ranking service to help consumers select attorneys. But some of the lawyers being ranked are objecting loudly to a system they consider arbitrary, capricious and damaging to their livelihoods - and have filed a class action suit in an attempt to force Avvo to stop. Eric Goldman, director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University School of Law, doubts plaintiffs can hold Avvo liable for third-party content under state consumer protection law. Goldman is a former general counsel at Epinions.com, a website where consumers share product reviews, and he said he is a strong proponent of helping consumers find the right lawyers.
August 2007
Inside Counsel
Utah has a new trademark statute that is supposedly limited in its geographical reach. It applies, by its terms, only when an online ad is displayed in Utah or when the advertiser or party selling the ad is located in the state. "Google can allow advertisers to tailor ads to specific geographical locations, but this technology isn't perfect," says Eric Goldman, who teaches cyberlaw at Santa Clara University School of Law. "The Utah law requires perfect geo-location technology, and no one has such technology." "On its face it violates the dormant Commerce Clause," Goldman says.
July 26, 2007
Business Wire
Defense lawyers with pending capital cases will come to college at Santa Clara Law on Aug. 4 for a six-day intensive training program with some of the nation's leading death penalty attorneys. "The college fosters a feeling of cooperation and community among participants and faculty who are united in the common goal of saving lives," said Ellen Kreitzberg, director of the Death Penalty College and professor of criminal law at Santa Clara University School of Law. "Every criminal defense attorney faces his or her greatest challenge in the representation of a person charged in a capital case," said Kreitzberg, who directs the program. This program is unique in that lawyers work on their actual cases and not on a casebook hypothetical.
July 19, 2007
BackStage
Stephen Diamond,associate professor of law at the Santa Clara University School of Law and a former candidate to be SAG's national executive director, said more than a billion dollars flow into the collective societies of Europe per year, millions of which are generated by the consumption of American entertainment. But there are many roadblocks to getting American artists their share. "It comes in a thousand different pieces," Diamond said of the European system. "Somebody walks into some used-book store in Europe and buys a VCR with three old episodes of Cheers on it.... Part of the price is going to include a 1 Euro tax that is owed to all of the creative players on Cheers.... It's complicated." Diamond said the studios now take at least 50 percent of those foreign levies. The remaining percentage is split among actors, writers, and directors.
July 17, 2007
Washington Internet Daily
Search engines' functionality and ability to tag content on sharing Web sites like YouTube and Flickr could be threatened by a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, San Francisco, panel decision against Roommate.com (WID May 16 p1), according to an amicus brief seeking rehearing by the whole court. The brief was submitted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Lycos and Eric Goldman, director of the High Tech Law Institute at the Santa Clara University School of Law.
July 16, 2007
Lawyers USA
In a surprising decision that narrows the availability of immunity for websites, the 9th Circuit has ruled that ISPs can be held responsible for answers to structured questionnaires and user profiles that could be used for discriminatory purposes. "In terms of Sect. 230 jurisprudence, this is the first appellate incursion into an otherwise uniform defense-favorable interpretation of the statute," Santa Clara University School of Law cyberspace law professor Eric Goldman said. "This is an unprecedented change of direction. "
July 12, 2007
Back Stage East
The time for big talk: writers' negotiations with producers could set precedents for next decade. Steve Diamond, who teaches labor relations at the Santa Clara, University School of Law and is a former candidate to be SAG s national executive director, said the producers' stance on residuals could be a form of brinksmanship designed to exploit possible rifts in the guilds. "Maybe they're trying to create polarization," Diamond said. "There's been a kind of modus vivendi worked out between the pragmatists and the more militant elements.... The producers would want to break that and get the militants to bare their teeth and break up whatever pragmatic alliance is now taking hold." Beyond the potential fight over old-media residuals, Diamond said now is the time for the guilds to establish a system for new-media compensation. "The key question for the guilds is: Are they positioned to exploit or leverage their unique contributions to this environment and get rewarded for it?" he said. "My concern is you can get overly pragmatic to avoid a confrontation and miss the opportunity to start resetting the debate. This is not something they're going to win in the first round. They are not going to radically restructure the revenue-sharing model in the next negotiation. The real challenge is intellectual and strategic: Can they open the door and lay the groundwork for what I think will be a battle over the next decade?"
July 2, 2007
South Carolina Lawyers Weekly
For most attorneys, it's not uncommon to receive 150-200 new e-mails per day, approximately 25,000 per year. With that kind of clutter, tangled with spam and other unimportant e-mails, it's easy for a valuable e-mail concerning a client or case to get lost in the shuffle. Keep it simple. For Eric Goldman, a professor of Internet law and intellectual property at Santa Clara University School of Law, managing e-mail is as easy as picking the right service. Goldman doesn't bother with filing systems or setting up an archive; he was one of the earliest beta testers for Google Mail (GMail) when it debuted in 2004. GMail boasts nearly 3,000 megabytes of free space, and one of the best spam filters of any free e-mail service (a 2006 survey by the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group estimates 80 per-cent of e-mail is spam). Goldman, who says he receives more than 100 e-mails per day, uses GMail's label function to organize e-mail and scans his junk folder a few times a day.
July 1, 2007
San Jose Mercury News (California)
Lia Epperson is an assistant professor at the Santa Clara University School of Law. She wrote an article for the Mercury News concerning equal educational opportunity - we're not there yet. The most disappointing aspect of the decisions is that President Bush's newest appointments to the court, Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, would have banned almost all helpful measures to increase diversity in schools. Their position in these cases was predicted by earlier positions taken as lawyers with the Justice Department decades ago. True to their earlier stances, our newest justices will continue to work mightily to silence any debate on race-conscious government policies, and to eradicate efforts by federal, state and local governments to foster racial inclusion in education.
June 18, 2007
The Minnesota Lawyer
"We know people have some right to protect computer property, but we are not sure what the limits are," said Eric Goldman, a professor of cyberspace law at Santa Clara University School of Law. As a result, courts are in the process of sorting out when trespass to chattels should apply to website content and server use - and how much harm to computers or servers a plaintiff has to prove to win a case. "Where is the line between denial of service - where the server shuts down - and some lesser use of the server that might impose some demand on the server, such as a single e-mail?" asked Goldman.
June 14, 2007
Washington Internet Daily
California law professors and bar officials asked a state legislator to hold a trademark dilution bill until an industry group revises its model bill, saying the legislator's bill departs from federal changes enacted last year. Signers included Eric Goldman, Santa Clara U. School of Law.
May 26, 2007
KNTV
The American military is telling soldiers not to use websites like YouTube ore MySpace. Margaret Russell, a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law said, "my first reaction is always, what is the government's justification to curtail someone's freedom of speech?" She says the web lets today's soldiers communicate without jeopardizing national security. "The government isn't saying this is why we're worried secrets will get out .. instead, it's taking something away that has served very well."
May 19, 2007
Business Wire
United States Circuit Judge and 1975 graduate of Santa Clara University Richard C. Tallman returned home today when addressed the class of 2007 at the Santa Clara University School of Law commencement ceremony in the university's Mission Gardens. Donald Polden, dean of the school of law, served as Master of Ceremonies and recognized a number of the distinguished guests at the university's 156th commencement ceremony including: Santa Clara City Mayor, Patricia M. Mahan and Santa Clara County District Attorney, Dolores Carr.
May 11, 2007
The Chronicle of Higher Education
An endowment has been announced that the Santa Clara University School of Law that will award a prize recognizing a person who has used skill, knowledge, and abilities in the field of law to correct injustice: $1-million from Katharine and George Alexander.
May 9, 2007
Los Angeles Times (California)
An influential California commission said Thursday that forensic science errors are a major contributor to wrongful convictions and called for better training, more monitoring and stronger standards in the real world of "CSI." "This is long overdue," said Gerald F. Uelmen, head of the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice and professor at the Santa Clara University School of Law. "We're in a world where forensic science is playing a greater role in all criminal cases. It puts a lot of pressure on the system -- not defense lawyers, but prosecutors and the criminalists themselves," he said.
May 2, 2007
Chicago Tribune
The search engines are under legal attack for allowing marketers to buy advertisements tied to searches of their competitors' brands or trademarks. For example, type in "Allstate" in a Google search, and one of the text-based ads that pops up is for State Farm, Allstate's chief rival for car and home insurance. Some U.S. legal experts say trademark owners are going too far. Trademarks can be effective in stopping counterfeiters but they also can be used to stifle competition. In the online context, the infringement lawsuits have an anti-competitive theme, said Eric Goldman, director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University who sympathizes with the search-engines on the issue. "Keyword triggering of advertising is generally not a problem for consumers but it is for advertisers," he said.
April 27, 2007
TECHWEB
User-generated content may look like a free lunch, but it's not necessarily without cost, as sandwich chain Quiznos found out. Rival sandwich company Subway is fighting to hold Quiznos liable for false advertising under the Lanham Act for statements made in user-generated video commercials. Eric Goldman, assistant professor at Santa Clara University School of Law, said the case has potentially broad implications. "Asking users to do work for you [doesn't] immediately provide insulation from what they do," he said. "Sometimes in the mania to engage in crowd sourcing, people might be tempted to overlook the legal liability issue, and they shouldn't."
April 25, 2007
Los Angeles Times(California)
A federal judge has ruled that some Los Angeles police tactics in patrolling downtown are unconstitutional, raising questions about the city's successful campaign to dramatically reduce the number of crimes and homeless people. U.S. District Judge Dean D. Pregerson found that officers question -- and at times search -- parolees and probationers without evidence that they might have committed a crime, which the judge said was unconstitutional. He ordered the LAPD to change its practices. "It reins in the use of probation and parole searches as just another authorization for warrantless police activity that would otherwise be governed by constitutional limits," said Gerald F. Uelman, a Santa Clara University law school professor.
April 11, 2007
Los Angeles Times (California)
The Los Angeles Police Department's landmark Special Order 40, which