Vogel Internet, Information Technology and e-Discovery Blog : Texas Internet, Information Technology, eCommerce & E-Discovery Lawyer & Attorney Peter S. Vogel : Gardere Wynne Sewell Law Firm : Dallas TX

New Scientist reports that HP may use the Autonomy pattern-recognition eDiscovery tool to develop a new search engine which would work in tandem with HP’s text-based search. The report includes this example:

…the ability to point your phone at an image and having it return web links, documents, and other information. Other applications might be more robust internal database search for e-discovery or for scientific analysis of large datasets.

Bloomberg reported that HP paid $10 billion to acquire Autonomy so this certainly extends the search engine wars!

Of course from Microsoft’s perspective the prospect that HP will have a new search engine could not have come at a worse time since Bing loses $1 billion a quarter, and CNNMoney reports that Bing has lost $5.5 billion since its launch in June 2009.
 

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Effective in December 2011 OnStar GPS navigation-and-emergency-services company will collect vehicle data for those customers who terminate their agreements.

The 10 page OnStar Privacy Statement states that:

Unless the Data Connection to your Vehicle is deactivated, data about your Vehicle will continue to be collected even if you do not have a Plan. It is important that you convey this to other drivers, occupants, or subsequent owners of your Vehicle. You may deactivate the Data Connection to your Vehicle at any time by contacting an OnStar Advisor.

In addition to GPS location data the Privacy Statement goes on to specify what information OnStar collects:

• your contact information, (including your name, address, telephone number and email address);
• your billing information (including your credit card number);
• information about the purchase or lease of your Vehicle, such as the vehicle identification number (VIN), make, model, year and date of purchase or lease and selling/preferred dealer; and
• other information that you voluntarily provide to us (such as your language preference, your license plate number and/or your emergency contact information).

It will be interesting to see how many OnStar customers will allow this tracking when their contracts end. GPS data intrudes on personal privacy whether it’s an iPhone, iPad, or OnStar device. But do people really think about their GPS privacy?
 

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Trademark owners must act to avoid adult brands creating .xxx domains and can take advantage of the sunrise phase from September 7 through October 28, 2011.

I welcome you to read the Gardere Intellectual Property Alert entitled “Prevent the XXX Industry from Using Your Trademark” written by my partner Kay Schwartz and associate Jason Fulmer including these quick facts:

.XXX is reserved exclusively for the online adult entertainment industry.

The .XXX launch begins with the "Sunrise" phase, which is a limited period for trademark owners to protect brands before wider availability of domain names. The Sunrise phase is open September 7 - October 28, 2011.

Sunrise has two registration programs: Sunrise A and Sunrise B. Those wishing to register domains for adult brands use Sunrise A, while those wishing to proactively protect non-adult brands from non-legitimate use employ Sunrise B.

Beginning in December, any domain name not protected will be available for use by the adult entertainment industry.

ICM Registry administers this new top-level domain, and registrations are performed through many of the usual registrars (such as GoDaddy.com and Network Solutions).

All trademark owners need to give some thought to protecting their trademarks so they can avoid adult sites from hijacking valuable domain names.
 

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All Social Media and Internet businesses rely on TOS and Click Agreements to protect their legal rights, but few businesses take the time to make sure that the TOS and Click Agreements actually protect their business operations. I welcome you to read my eCommerce Times column entitled “Your Customers May Not Review Your ToS and Click Agreements, but You Should!”

Early this fall in my Law of eCommerce class at the SMU Dedman School of Law the class reviewed the TOS for the major search engines – Google, Bing, Yahoo!, and AOL. Even though these search engines compete head to head, no surprise the legal terms varied widely. But it was a surprise to my students, none of whom had had taken the time to review TOS before.

So take some time and review your TOS and Click Agreements to see if they actually protect your business.
 

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After filing more than 275 copyright infringement lawsuits, it now turns out that Righthaven was not the owner of the copyrights asserted in the lawsuit, and as a result is now on the verge of bankruptcy. The copyright infringement claims were made for reposting pictures and stories previously published by the Las Vegas Review-Journal, owned by Stephens Media. A Nevada federal judge recently unsealed an internal agreement between Righthaven and Stephen Media which disclosed the lack of Righthaven’s ownership. According to Kurt Opshal of the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

Righthaven does not own the rights to reproduce, distribute, display or prepare derivative works of the articles it is suing over, even though it makes those claims in its lawsuits...Copyright law does not permit a person to sue for infringement unless that person owns “the rights to reproduce and distribute the work.

Apparently Righthaven was trying to pattern its business after patent trolls, but since Righthaven does not have an ownership claim made in the lawsuit that model failed.

This is an interesting evolution of Internet copyright infringement claims.

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Google paid an estimated $100-200 million to expand its reach by purchasing Zagat Survey that potentially increases Google’s Social Media power. Pew Research recently report that 92% of adults on the Internet use search engines every day, so couple that information with Google’s “estimates that about 20 percent of its daily searches are for things that are nearby.”

Marissa Mayer (Google’s vice president for local, maps and location services) said:

All of these are users wondering where they should go, where they should spend their time, so to be able to offer accurate information is important, and that’s why we’ve been getting focused on reviews. 

As Google gets the corner on more valuable information, the net result is that Google's purchase of Zagat Survey appears to be brilliant.
 

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Google’s Eric Schmidt said in a recent interview that Google+ users should be not be anonymous since it would be better “if we had an accurate notion that you were a real person as opposed to a dog, or a fake person, or a spammer.” Schmidt’s comments thoughts reinforce one of my favorite New Yorker cartoons from 1993 with two dogs sitting in front of a computer with one saying to the other “on the Internet nobody knows you’re a dog!”

Schmidt’s interview is posted at Google+  which now has an estimated 25 million users also included these thoughts:

But my general rule is that is people have a lot of free time and people on the Internet, there are people who do really really evil and wrong things on the Internet, and it would be useful if we had strong identity so we could weed them out. I’m not suggesting eliminating them, what I’m suggesting is if we knew their identity was accurate, we could rank them. Think of them like an identity rank.

Since we really have no clue who is using the Internet and Social Media whether a dog or an evil person maybe Eric Schmidt is right that forcing people to identify themselves would be better. But in his interview included the following:

But we want people to stand for something, we want people to be willing to express themselves. There are obviously people for which using their real name is not appropriate, and it’s completely optional, and if you’re one of those people don’t do it.

Clearly the debate about anonymity will continue, so stay tuned.

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LinkedIn boasts +120 million members who all agree to be bound to their User Agreement, but few LinkedIn members noticed that on June 16, 2011 the LinkedIn User Agreement changed. LinkedIn’s new User Agreement is not radically different from previous versions. However since the LinkedIn User Agreement binds +120 million members world-wide it seems that these members would want to know that members expressly agree that they will comply with Section 10 B “Don’t Undertake the following” including (without limitation):

1. Act dishonestly or unprofessionally by engaging in unprofessional behavior by posting inappropriate, inaccurate, or objectionable content to LinkedIn;

2. Publish inaccurate information in the designated fields on the profile form (e.g., do not include a link or an email address in the name field). Please also protect sensitive personal information such as your email address, phone number, street address, or other information that is confidential in nature;

5. Invite people you do not know to join your network;

6. Upload a profile image that is not your likeness or a head-shot photo;

How many people violate LinkedIn’s User Agreement every day? If LinkedIn terminates members for violating the User Agreement they run the risk they become ostracized from an important Social Media network, so one would think it important to read the User Agreement!

What does your business do to protect itself from bad behavior on your website? Do your terms of service comport with your business and the visitors to your website?

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