Type: Testimony Year: 2002 A new form of lawsuit called a “cyberslapp” suit is threatening to overturn the promise of anonymous online speech and chill the freedom of expression that is central to the online world. Cyberslapp cases typically involve a person who has posted anonymous criticisms of a corporation or public figure on the […]
Cyberslapp Suits
Children’s Internet Protection Act (CHIPA)
Type: Brief Year: 2001 Students assisted the Consortium for School Networks and the International Society for Technology in Education with a public rulemaking implementing the Children’s Internet Protection Act. The Act requires schools and libraries that receive federal funding for Internet services and connections to install filters. The students filed initial and reply comments before […]
Prison Internet Mail
Type: Brief Year: 2001 Clinic students investigated the issue of California prison facilities banning inmate receipt of postal mail containing materials that had originated on the Internet. The case was ultimately brought to court by the ACLU Northern California Office and the Prison Law Office as Clement v. California Dept. of Corrections, 220 F. Supp. […]
Clinic Filed Brief Supporting Immunity for Third Party Content
Type: Brief Year: 2004 The Samuelson Clinic, on behalf of a group of law professors with expertise in Internet law, submitted a brief to the California Supreme Court supporting reversal of the California Court of Appeal’s narrow interpretation of the Communications Decency Act in Barrett v. Rosenthal. The brief argued that by limiting an Internet […]
Digital Grass Roots: Issue Advocacy in the Age of the Internet
Type: Book chapter Year: 2002 Clinic Director Deirdre Mulligan and Jerry Berman co-authored a chapter in the book The Civic Web: Online Politics and Democratic Values entitled “Digital Grass Roots: Issue Advocacy in the Age of the Internet.” The book discusses the basic issues that have emerged since the introduction of computer-networked communications into U.S. […]
Chamberlain v. Skylink in Federal Circuit
Type: Brief Year: 2004 In a case of first impression, the Federal Circuit rejected a consumer manufacturer of garage door openers’ efforts to employ a controversial section of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the anti-circumvention provisions (1201), to distort the market by employing computer code to lock-in consumers and lock-out aftermarket competition. The DMCA was […]
MGM v. Grokster in Ninth Circuit
Type: Brief Year: 2003 The Clinic filed an amicus brief on behalf of 40 intellectual property and technology law professors in MGM v. Grokster. The brief, which you can find here, addresses three main points. First, that the Supreme Court in Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios (the Betamax case), employed sound law […]
P2P Providers Not Liable for Their Users’ Copyright Infringement
Type: Brief, News Item Year: 2004 The Ninth Circuit Court of Appears ruled that P2P providers Grokster and Morpheus are not liable for their users’ copyright infringements. Like the VCR in the Supreme Court’s famous Sony decision, the P2P software is “capable of substantial non-infringing uses,” and, unlike the Napster system, the providers have no […]
Clinic Filed Amicus Brief in Second Circuit Court of Appeals in United States v. Martignon
Type: Brief Year: 2005 The Samuelson Clinic submitted a brief amicus curiae on behalf of thirty intellectual property and constitutional law professors in the case of United States v. Martignon. The case concerns the federal criminal anti-bootlegging statute, which the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York struck down last year because […]
Clinic asks Supreme Court to deny certiorari in MGM v. Grokster
Type: Brief Year: 2004 The clinic, in conjunction with American University’s Glushko-Samuelson Intellectual Property Law Clinic, represented the Internet Archive and the Computer and Communications Industry Association in requesting that the Supreme Court deny certiorari in the Grokster case on November 8, 2004. The brief states that the Sony standard of “substantial noninfringing uses” is […]