Justia Internet Law Opinion Summaries

Defendants, based in Romania and Chicago, operated an internet scam using E-bay. The Seventh Circuit addressed appeals by defendants convicted of wire fraud (18 U.S.C. 1343). The court upheld a sentence of 63 months imprisonment, at the high end of the guidelines, that did not include credit for time served on related state charges or in custody of immigration officials. The court properly allowed the defendant's attorney to withdraw and declined to appoint new counsel. Another defendant's appeal was barred by his plea agreement. The court properly considered the foreseeability of losses caused by co-schemers in sentencing a third defendant, who also pled guilty to receipt of stolen funds in interstate commerce (18 U.S.C. 2315). With respect to the only defendant to go to trial, the court vacated a conviction for aggravated identity theft (18 U.S.C. 1028A), finding the evidence insufficient to show that he knew that the passport he used belonged to a real person and was not a purely fictitious document; affirmed his conviction for money laundering (18 U.S.C. 1956(h)),stating that the court did not commit plain error in not limiting jury consideration of âproceedsâ to the net profits of the internet fraud scheme; and vacated his 324-month sentence.

Petitioner appealed convictions related to a shooting death where he contended that the trial judge abused his discretion in admitting several printed pages from petitioner's girlfriend's MySpace profile. The state did not question the girlfriend about the pages allegedly printed from her MySpace account but, instead, attempted to authenticate the pages as belonging to her through testimony of the lead investigator in the case. At issue was whether the trial judge abused his discretion in admitting the MySpace evidence and whether electronically stored information printed from a social networking website could be properly authenticated. The court held that the trial judge abused his discretion in admitting the MySpace evidence where the picture of the girlfriend, coupled with her birth date and location, were not sufficient "distinctive characteristics" on a MySpace profile to authenticate its printout given the prospect that someone other than she could have created the site and posted the comment at issue. The court also held that possible avenues to properly authenticate a profile or posting printed from a social networking site might include asking the purported creator if she indeed created the profile and if she added the posting in question, searching the computer of the person who allegedly created the profile and examine the computer's internet history and hard drive, and obtaining information directly from the social networking site.

The United States appealed from the district court's dismissal of several counts of an indictment charging defendant with, inter alia, numerous violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act ("CFAA"), 18 U.S.C. 1030, when defendant recruited employees of his former employer to obtain trade secrets and other proprietary information by using their user accounts to access the employer's computer system. At issue was whether the employees had exceeded their authorized access by accessing information that they were entitled to access only under limited circumstances. The court reversed the district court's decision and held that an employee, like the employees at issue in this instance, exceeded authorized access under section 1030 when he or she violated the employer's computer access restrictions, including use restrictions.

Plaintiff filed a complaint against defendants, Virtual City Vision, Inc. ("VSV") and Van James Bond Tran ("Tran"), alleging federal, state, and common law claims when defendants' newportnews.com domain name was confusingly similar to plaintiff's Newport News registered trademarks and its newport-news.com domain name. VCV raised numerous issues on appeal: the magistrate judge's failure to recuse; the court's assertion of personal jurisdiction over Tran, the district court's grant of summary judgment to plaintiff on the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act ("ACPA") claim; the district court's denial of VCV's request to file a counterclaim; the district court's award of statutory damages and attorney's fees to plaintiff and sanctions against VCV's counsel; and the district court's finding that VCV was not the prevailing party for purposes of an award of attorneys' fees. The court held that the magistrate judge did not abuse his discretion in finding that the circumstances would not cause a reasonable observer to question his impartiality, the district court found sufficient facts to pierce the corporate veil and exercise jurisdiction over Tran, and the district court's grant of summary judgment on the ACPA claim was proper. The court also held that the district court did not abuse its discretion in denying VCV's motion for leave to file a counterclaim. The court further held that the district court did not clearly err in finding that VCV's infringement was exceptional or abused its discretion in awarding attorneys' fees, that VCV's attempt to profit from plaintiff's mark by creating a website focused on women's fashion was sufficiently egregious to merit the statutory damages award, that the award of sanctions was not an abuse of discretion, and that plaintiff's abandonment claim did not make VCV a prevailing party.

Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra ("Winklevosses") sought to intervene after a district court entered judgment enforcing the Term Sheet and Settlement Agreement ("Settlement Agreement") signed by Facebook, the Winklevosses, and the Winklevosses' competing social network site, ConnectU, where the Settlement Agreement envisioned that Facebook would acquire all of ConnectU's shares in exchange for cash and a percentage of Facebook's common stock. At issue was whether the Settlement Agreement was enforceable where the Winklevosses claimed that they did not discover the facts that gave rise to their Rule 10b-5 claims under the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934 ("Act") until after they signed the Settlement Agreement's release of claims and whether the releases foreclosed their challenge to the Settlement Agreement where section 29(a) of the Act precluded a mutual release of unknown securities fraud claims arising out of negotiations to settle a pending lawsuit. The court held that the district court correctly concluded that the Settlement Agreement was enforceable and intended to release claims arising out of the settlement negotiations where the release was valid under section 29(a) when the Settlement Agreement was meant to end a dispute between sophisticated parties acting in an adversarial setting that was characteristic of litigation and could not be interpreted as leaving open the door to litigation about the settlement process.