Austin Technology Law Blog : Texas Technology Lawyers & Attorneys for Copyright, Trademarks & Software Licensing in Houston, Dallas & Austin TX

I'm pretty sure that activists didn't occupy the State Capitol building in response to this bill, but it could have some ramifications for companies that enlist language that purports to let contracts automatically renew, unless one of the parties takes some affirmative action.

There is a pretty common provision in a lot of contracts, including those that provide for technology consulting and services that goes something like this:

"This Agreement has a one year initial term, beginning on the Effective Date ("Initial Term"). The Agreement will automatically renew on each anniversary of the Effective Date for subsequent one year terms (each a "Renewal Term") unless either party gives written notice to the other at least thirty (30) days prior to the expiration of the Initial Term or the Renewal Term that the Agreement will terminate at the end of the present term."

Nothing sinister here.  It is designed to take some administrative work out of renewals and vendors like them because of the inertia that induces customers to not think about nor terminate an agreement.

The Wisconsin legislature, having solved all of the harder problems, turned its attention to agreements like this in the present session.

They have decreed that after May 1, 2011, agreements between businesses to lease equipment or provide business services (supposedly technology services would qualify) can not have an enforceable automatic renewal clause unless adequate notice was given and the customer's initials appeared in a certain place on the contract. 

There are several exceptions to this of course.  Lobbyists are good at their jobs.  However, anybody that does business in Wisconsin and leases equipment or provides services should look at this statute and determine if they would profit from adjusting their forms.  There is also a provision that provides for a right of private action for failure to comply.  The amount of recovery provided for in an individual contract is relatively minor and repair is simple but one could envision class actions under this statute that would be a real nuisance.

And just when you thought it was safe to go back into Wisconsin.

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Well, the Rapture came and went and apparently everyone I know is a dirty, rotten sinner.  Now, we get another chance to be elevated into something greater than ourselves.  You will recall that we warned you that the Internet ran out of numbers a month or so ago and it had about as much impact as last Saturday's event.

Now, the Internet Society is tempting fate by calling for a World IPv6 day on June 8, 2011.  We are less likely to see billboards and covered cars extolling this day than we did for the Rapture and we certainly will see less media coverage although this touches far more people than 144,000.

On June 8, several hundred websites and a few large companies will provide their content in IPv6 compatible mode to remind people of the coming apocalypse when all websites and devices with IPv4 numbers try to switch over.  Talk about your Armageddons!  Just wait until the internet and cell phones don't work.  At that point, not even one of the major deities could save us.

To determine your browser's ability to be screwed up by this change over, you can go here to check now.  To prepare for IPv6 day and the return of Y2K, please fasten your seat belt and return your browser to its full uptight and locked position.  Your pilot has been advised of some choppy air ahead.

(To be clear, this is this Blog's lame attempt at sarcasm.  We believe the IPv6 changeover is beneficial and necessary.  Really, we do.)

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Alliteration abounds.  Reports today concern the EU Directive on the use of cookies, a settlement with a Disney subsidiary for violation of COPPA (Children's Online Privacy Act of 1998) and why paying attention to the construction and organization in the drafting of a contract can be extremely important.

1.  The European Union has issued a directive that will go into effect on May 26 of this year that basically reverses the way cookies are handled.  In the past the regulations required that the user be advised of the way that cookies are used and be given the opportunity to opt out of receiving them.  The new regulations requires the same advising but requires "consent" before cookies can be placed.  This is the so-called "opt in" provision.  The regulations recognize that enforcement of this will be a phased in approach with the most intrusive cookies getting the most attention.  The Information Commissioner's Office has issued advice about how to deal with this.  If your website attracts significant traffic in the European Union, you would be well advised to read the ICO's advice and plan accordingly.

2. COPPA has requirements about what information can be collected from children online and what use can be made of such information.  The Federal Trade Commission accused Playdom, an online game provider, of violating COPPA by collecting information from children without parental consent and by violating its own stated privacy policy.  Playdom is a subsidiary of the Disney company.  The FTC filed a complaint against Playdom that resulted in a consent decree, which among other things, required a $3,000,000 civil penalty.   This is the largest penalty yet assessed for such a violation.

3.  The placement (or misplacement) of a single word recently made a $1,000,000 difference in a Maryland case.  In Weichert Co. of Maryland, Inc. v. Faust, an ex-employee of a real estate firm was sued for violation her obligation of  loyalty and the non-solicitation clause of her employment agreement.  The Court found that she violated the obligation of loyalty but not the non-solicitation clause.  Her contract had an attorneys' fee provision where the prevailing party is entitled to its fees.  The real estate firm prevailed on the breach of the duty of loyalty but the employee prevailed on the issue about non-solicitation.  The attorneys' fee provision was included in the non-solicitation clause and gave fees to the party that prevailed "hereunder".  Since the "hereunder' was in the particular clause, the Court reasoned that it applied only to that clause and not the contract or the relationship as a whole.  Hence, the employee was entitled to her attorneys' fee, which were approximately $1,000,000, even though she had "prevailed" on only half of the issues.  In the lessons learned department for us attorneys, if you intend to make a provision apply to the contract as a whole and not just a specific clause, move the provision into a section of its own or make it very clear that it is applicable to the whole contract.

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You will remember that the Winklevoss twins had tried to get their settlement with Facebook overturned.  The Ninth Circuit had decided that the settlement should stand and that litigation should end at some point.  The Winklevosses did not take the hint and asked for a rehearing en banc (i.e. that all the judges of the Ninth Circuit hear it as a panel rather than the three judge panel that originally sat on the case).  That motion was denied without comment.  The only option left for the twins is to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.  In order to decide to grant certiorari (i.e. the decision to put the case on the Supreme Court docket), the Supremes will have to believe there is some constitutional issue to be decided.  That will not be easy in this case as the issues deal primarily with contract law and the allegations of fraud.

We had mentioned before that we hope the Ninth Circuit granted a rehearing for no other reason than it gave us fodder for further posts.  We now wish the same for the Supreme Court.

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We had written a couple of times (here and here) about the on-going battle among Apple, Microsoft and Amazon about the use of the term "App Store" as a trademark. 

Now, Microsoft, Nokia, Sony, HTC and Amazon have all registered opposition to Apple's exclusive use of such term in Europe.  Most of these companies announced yesterday that they have filed or will file opposition to Apple with the Office of Harmonization in the Internal Market, the body responsible for trademarks in the European Union.

Apple has already obtained a mark for App Store with the OHIM but this new gang of opponents are seeking to have this reversed on the grounds that such term is generic and has been used by everybody for a long time.

If Apple is able to hold on to the right of exclusive use of this mark, it would be huge.  The price of poker just went up.

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A few comments and updates:

1.  The Ninth Circuit recently held in U.S. v Nosal (9th Circuit No. 10-10038) that exceeding your employer's computer use restrictions could be criminal under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, 18 U.S.C. 1030 et seq.  Sec. 1030 (a) (4) states: "Whoever... knowingly and with intent to defraud, accesses a protected computer without authorization, or exceeds authorized access, and by means of such conduct furthers the intended fraud and obtains anything of value.." violates this statute.  The Defendant had authority to access the computer in question but exceeded his employer's written use policy and obtained some confidential information.  The Court reasoned that this satisfied the statutory requirement of "exceeds authorized access" and if coupled with furthering fraud and obtaining something of value that was sufficient to avoid dismissal.  Was the headline about accessing Facebook at work being criminal hyperbole?  Yeah, a little, but it caused you to look, didn't it?  A lesson to be learned from this is that a well crafted computer use policy will be another tool for employers to use to protect their trade secrets.  Employees' rights groups are not thrilled.

2.  We noted recently that continuing to provide certain services after actual knowledge of infringing activity could lead to liability for contributory infringement but that prior received notices were not necessarily actual knowledge. This principle was confirmed in Wolk v. Kodak Imaging Network Inc., Southern District of New York, March 17, 2011.  The Court in Wolk held that previous takedown notices from the same artist did not give rise to actual or apparent knowledge nor the obligation to police the site for infringement.

3.  Suits relating to use of competitor's trademarks as search terms continue to show up.  We had discussed a couple here and here.  In InternetShopsInc.com v. Six C Consulting, Inc. the defendants conceded liability but the Court failed to award any damages because they could not find a single sale that resulted from the infringement.  The Court did enjoin the defendant from using the trademark as a search term going forward.

4.  Louboutin is a luxury shoe retailer who started marketing shoes with red soles in 1992.  Yves Saint Laurent recently marketed shoes with the same color uppers and soles. One of these was red and therefore had a red sole.  Others were blue and green with correspondingly colored soles. Louboutin has filed an infringement action relating to the red soled variety in the Southern District of New York.  A pivotal issue in this case will be whether consumers will be confused.  Would you be confused if you were going to pay more than $1,000 for a pair of shoes?  I mean confused as to the identity, not the wisdom of paying that much for shoes.

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"Neither this Agreement nor any of the rights, interest or obligations under this Agreement shall be assigned, in whole or in part, by operation of law or otherwise by any of the parties without the prior written consent of the other parties..."

This provision or something very similar appears in approximately 100% of license agreements, whether patent, software or something else.  It is ubiquitous, well written, rarely discussed and settled, or so you thought.

The Chancery Court of Delaware (them again) recently gave reason to reconsider this provision.  In Meso Scale Diagnostics, LLC v. Roche Diagnostics GMBH, C.A. No. 5589-VCP, Decided April 8, 2011, the Court considered the application of this clause in the context of a reverse triangle merger.  For those of you scoring at home, a reverse triangle merger occurs when a wholly owned subsidiary of a parent merges with an unaffiliated entity, with the unaffiliated entity being the survivor.  The result is the unaffiliated entity becomes a wholly owned subsidiary of the parent without the necessity of the parent directly purchasing the stock of such unaffiliated entity.

In the instant case, Roche had licensed some technology from Meso and there had been prior controversies and law suits relating to the scope of use that Roche had under the license agreements.  Roche had lost some of these battles and had responded by repeatedly acquiring companies that had the technology.  One of the companies that had license rights was acquired by Roche by the above described reverse triangle merger method.  The result was that such licensee became the wholly owned subsidiary of Roche.  The licensors complained that this violated the language and intent of the non-assignment clause as set out above.  Roche countered that there was no assignment of any kind and that only the ownership of the licensee changed.  Roche filed a motion to dismiss for failure to state a cause of action based partially on their assertion that no assignment had taken place.

The Delaware court said that it wasn't as simple as that.  The Court reasoned that even though the non-assignment language did not expressly address a change of control or ownership of the licensee, that did not necessarily mean that it falls outside of the ambit of the non-assignment language.  The Court basically said that it felt strongly both ways and both parties had taken reasonable positions and had cited cases supporting their positions, although none were Delaware cases dealing with reverse triangle mergers.  The Court also stated that since Delaware had not directly ruled on this issue,therefore, at this early stage of the proceedings, it could not dismiss as a matter of law.

Again, it is important to note that this was in response to a motion to dismiss and the standards are different than in a final adjudication.  The Court has not ruled that a reverse triangle merger runs afoul of a non-assignment clause that prohibits assignments occurring "...by operation of law".

The Court's reasoning and some of its dicta indicates that it could ultimately find that a merger, however constituted, is tantamount to an assignment if certain elements are present.  How that shakes out remains to be seen.

However, if such an outcome bothers you (whether you are a licensor, licensee, assignor, assignee or something else), you should strongly consider the construction of the language.

A licensor seeking to prevent such an assignment would opt to include specific language about any kind of merger or change of control constituting an assignment that is prohibited.  Others (licensees, etc.), seeking more freedom in assignment, should be leery of such language. Companies considering acquisition and doing due diligence should consider whether their proposed transaction would bring any of these issues into play.  Let your lawyer know what your plans and purposes are so they can address those issues.

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Companies hosting web sites and providing search engine optimization (SEO) services generally enjoy safe harbor protection from copyright infringement under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and protection from liability for information provided by third parties under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, but does that protection extend to protection from contributory trademark infringement liability?  Courts increasingly have answered that question in the negative.

Let's examine one such instance.  Christopher Prince operated several websites, one of which was called "copycatclubs.com".  Through these websites (all of which resolved to a single online store), Mr. Prince sold golf equipment, accessories and apparel.  The online store was described as a "wholesaler" that was a "...one stop shop for the best copied and original golf equipment on the internet".  A shopper working for Roger Cleveland Golf Company, Inc. (Cleveland) ordered several clubs described as "Cleveland" clubs from the online store.  The shopper received the order and the clubs were branded as "Cleveland" clubs.  Cleveland determined that the clubs were counterfeit and brought suit against Mr. Prince and some of his affiliates.  During discovery, it was determined that Mr. Prince employed Bright Builders, Inc., a web site designer and SEO consultant to create and support the web sites and the business model.  Cleveland amended its complaint to include Bright Builders as a defendant and allege that Bright Builders had contributorily infringed Cleveland's trademarks.

Bright Builders moved for summary judgment with a one and one-half page motion with no supporting citations or reference to the record as is required by court rules.  The gist of Bright Builders' defense was that it was merely a "web hosting entity" and was not "...aware that Mr. Prince was engaged in illegal activities...".  Cleveland strongly disputed this and cited evidence in the record that Bright Builders created the website, assured Prince that he would make at least $300 a month from the online store, took $10,000 to provide coaching and mentoring services, provided a Project Advisor and had discussions with Prince about developing copycatclubs.com.  In fact, the Court said that the name (copycatclubs) should have alerted Bright Builders to possible infringement (even though copying is not necessarily illegal).  Bright Builders did not bother to reply to Cleveland's response.

Perhaps due in no small part to the nonchalant manner in which Bright Builders approached the lawsuit and the pleadings, the Court found that there was a genuine issue of material fact as to whether Bright Builders participated in Prince's business to such an extent that Bright Builders could be held liable for trademark infringement and denied the motion for summary judgment.  This was in December of 2010 and the case proceeded to trial.  On March 10, 2011 the jury found infringement by both Prince and Bright Builders and returned a much larger verdict against Bright Builders (the secondary infringer) than it did against Prince (the actual infringer).

So, here we are again in the Lessons Learned Department.  What steps should website developers and SEO consultants take (or not take) to minimize their exposure to a verdict for secondary liability?

Consider these principles:

1.  If the developer exerts sufficient control over the website and knows or had reason to know of infringement, the developer must not fail to take appropriate actions.  The developer does not have to reasonably anticipate that infringement will occur and generalized knowledge is not sufficient to impute knowledge of any and all instances of infringing activity.

2.  Demand letters and other notices from potential plaintiffs are not sufficient to establish a duty to act but when the developer has knowledge of specific infringing activities, it must not fail to take action to eliminate the infringing activities or it must cease to provide services to the infringer.

3.  The website hoster should have programs designed to detect possibilities of infringement and not fail to take defined steps to eliminate it when specifically found.

4.  Do not be "willfully blind" to infringement.  This means refusing to investigate when you fear the results of the investigation.  White heart and empty head is no defense.  Principles 1 through 4 above are discussed in great length and detail in Tiffany et al v. EBAY, Inc. 576 F. Supp. 463 (2008).

5.  You must not fail to do a better job of documenting your activities and responding to court pleadings than Bright Builders did.  While this might not be the developer's responsibility, the developer should be sure that it engages legal counsel knowledgeable in the area and that takes the potential liability seriously.

Therefore, the next time you are engaged to develop a website to sell Gucci bags and Louboutin shoes, do your due diligence to see if they are the real thing or you may end up taking a bigger hit than the actual culprit.  That's not optimization of any kind.

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