Free for a Fee

Lasoff owns Ingrass, which makes artificial turf. He claims he’s losing business to “cheaper, counterfeit” versions of Ingrass. (The opinion uses the term “counterfeit,” though it probably means knockoffs). He objects to the fact that Amazon runs keyword ads for “Ingrass” at the search engines and in promotional emails that are algorithmically programmed for remarketing (i.e., promoting products the email recipient viewed on Amazon but didn’t buy). The promotional email ad copy comes from third party sources. Prospective customers who saw these ads for “Ingrass” were directed to the Amazon product pages containing listings from the alleged counterfeiters.

Section 230

Citing the Ninth Circuit’s ccBill v. Perfect 10 ruling, the court cleans out all of the state law claims (unfair competition, state trademark infringement, tortious interference, negligence and unjust enrichment) due to Section 230. The court says:

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Case citation: Lasoff v. Amazon.com, (W.D. Wash. Jan. 26, 2017)

The content in this post was found at http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2017/02/amazon-defeats-lawsuit-over-its-keyword-ad-purchases-lasoff-v-amazon.htm and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com. Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post.