On May 14, 2010, Princeton University Archivist and Curator of Public Policy Papers, Daniel J. Linke, sent an email to RedState, a right-of-center blog, requesting that RedState remove a copy of Elena Kagan's undergraduate thesis from their web site. Kagan, who was recently nominated by President Obama to fill a vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court, wrote her thesis, "To the Final Conflict: Socialism in New York City, 1900-1933," in 1981, when she was a senior in the History Department at Princeton. Linke's email explained that "[c]opies [of the thesis] provided by the Princeton University Archives are governed by U.S. Copyright Law and are for private individual use only." Linke further asserted that "[a]ny electronic distribution is prohibited." 

RedState made Kagan's thesis available for downloading as a PDF file on May 13, 2010 in the body of a blog post entitled "BREAKING: We Have Elena Kagan's College Thesis" by Erik Erickson. After receiving Linke's email, RedState removed the thesis from its web site and provided the following explanation: "PULLED AT THE REQUEST OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY EXERCISING ITS COPYRIGHT RIGHTS."

Still, on May 14, 2010, the thesis was uploaded on Scribd.com, where it can be read in its entirety. The entire thesis is also available on infidelsarecool.com. Extensive excerpts from the thesis were published in Newsweek on May 12, 2010. Finally, the White House announced that it will make the document available to the general public, thus ending the impasse between Princeton and the online distributors of Kagan's thesis.

According to RedState, Princeton was trying to protect its revenue stream from hard copies of the thesis, which it sold for $57.  Yet, according to Politico, "the copyright in the thesis likely belongs to Kagan, not Princeton."

My wife and I went to Tiamo Resorts in the Bahamas on a vacation in March 2010. On our last night there, all of the cash in our luggage was stolen, amounting to $7600. We were told by the owners of the resort that his insurance would cover this loss, and he asked us to please be discreet. We were rushed off the resort and taken to the airport in Congo Town for our connecting flight to Nassau. While at the airport, we filed a report with the police. The police also took pictures of the luggage of our neighbors at the resort, who had their suitcase slashed into. Upon check-in at the resort, we had asked if the guest cottages had safes, and we were told that all was secure, and we could leave everything out. In other words, there were no in-room safes.

In the following months, we were discreet, but then we felt it was our responsibility to submit an honest review on TripAdvisor.com. (We also uncovered "visitor" reviews of the resort written by the resort's owner and reported this to the website.) We recently received a threatening letter from the law firm representing this resort. In this letter, the owners of the resort essentially call us liars and begin to twist the account of what happened. Included in this submission is a copy of that letter, and an ensuing letter where the resort asks us to remove ALL reviews. I've also included an email where the owner of the resort thanks us for being so cooperative and not making a scene the morning of our departure after we reported the theft.

There is a link to an article from the Nassau Guardian reporting on a separate theft at the resort that happened in April. The resort is attempting to bully us into removing our review from ALL travel sites, and we never agreed to do so. In fact, in the initial letter from their law firm, Tiamo states that they have no problem with people expressing their opinions, positive or otherwise. It seems that is not the case. They want to remove any negative reviews from the travel websites.

On May 10, 2010, Dr. Mazin K. Yaldo filed a lawsuit in federal district court against an unnamed Doe defendant, asserting claims for false light ant federal and state trademark infringement and unfair competition.  The claims were based on a Google AdWords campaign that used Plaintiff's trademark YALDO EYE CENTER to trigger an ad with the headline "Yaldo Eye Center Bankrupt" and the text "What you should know before considering yaldo" next to the URL "www.crainsdetroit.com" (a website that reports on local businesses in the Detroit area).  The link redirects to an article on the Crain's Detroit Business website titled "Eye surgery centers declare bankruptcy," which reported that "[f]ive companies headed by ophthalmologist and eye surgeon Dr. Mazin Yaldo have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection." 

According to the Complaint, Defendant purchased the keywords "Yaldo Eye Center," "Dr. Mazin Yaldo," "Dr. Yaldo," and "Mazin Yaldo" through the Google AdWords program.  The Complaint alleges that "Defendant's advertising is deliberately designed to cause consumers to believe that the advertisement was sponsored by Crain's Detroit Business and that the apparent warning is coming from a credible news source rather than Defendant," and that Defendant's acts were done "with the intent of urging consumers to reconsider their choice of vision correction services."  (Complaint ¶¶ 22-23)  Plaintiff further asserts that the advertisements are misleading, because they "deceiv[e] consumers. . . into believing that Crain's Detroit Business is offering a warning about the quality of services offered by Dr. Mazin Yaldo and or the Yaldo Eye Center." (Complaint ¶ 40)

According to the Complaint, Plaintiff complained to Google about the use of the YALDO EYE CENTER mark in the Google AdWords result, and Defendant subsequently modified the language of the advertisement to read "Yaldo LASIK Bankrupt," and "What You Should Know Before Considering Yaldo LASIK." (Complaint ¶¶ 29-31) 

On April 6, 2010, Generex, a biotechnology company, filed a lawsuit in state court against TheStreet.com, a financial news website, and Adam Feuerstein, a senior columnist, for statements published on the website's Biotech Stock Mailbag about the company.

Generex has been in the process of developing and seeking regulatory approval for Oral-Lyn, an insulin spray treatment for Type-1 and Type-2 diabetes. In two posts published on March 19, 2010 and March 26, 2010, Mr. Feuerstein wrote that "none of the Oral-Lyn data collected by Generex has been peer-reviewed by credible medical journals" and that "the company is using science and the quest to develop an alternative insulin delivery method not to actually help diabetics but as a ruse to perpetuate a 15 year-long stock promotion scheme."

In the complaint, Generex claims that these statements constitute libel, libel per se, product disparagement, and injurious falsehood, and is seeking $250,000,000 in damages.

Walter Milo and Anthony Shelton sued Guy Martin, Bill Cochran, Melvin Douglas, and Sandy Martin, the editors and coordinator of The Conroe Watchdog (collectively "The Watchdog"), a website that describes itself as providing "[t]he unfiltered truth about Conroe politics and your tax dollars."

According to the court on appeal, Milo and Shelton sued for comments posted in October 2006 by anonymous users on a portion of the website titled "Guest Book." These comments referred to Shelton as a "pulpit pimp" and that he drove a $90,000 Hummer, according to the Houston Community Newspapers (HCN). Also according to HCN, the comments also contained allegations that Milo committed a drug crime in 2005 and "cut a deal" with the district attorney, reducing his sentence to probation.

The trial court granted The Watchdog's no-evidence motion for summary judgment in December 2008. The summary judgment was upheld by the Court of Appeals of Texas on April 29, 2010, which pointed to lack of evidence that the anonymous posts were created by The Watchdog and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. According to HCN, this case was the last of three lawsuits claiming defamation against The Watchdog to be resolved. Dixon v. Martin ended in July 2008 when a jury ruled for The Watchdog (see Legal Threat Entry) and a third lawsuit filed by Rigby Owen, Jr. was withdrawn in October 2009.

Righthaven LLC, a Las Vegas company associated with Las Vegas Review-Journal owner Stephens Media LLC, filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Matt Farnham, a real estate agent, and Omnia Alliance LLC, the operator of Inside Real Estate, a website that describes itself as an "advanced tool for both real estate agents and home buyers and sellers on the web."

The complaint, which Righthaven filed in federal court in Nevada, alleges that Inside Real Estate displayed a "substantial portion" of two Review-Journal articles without permission.

On December 23, 2009 Barbara Loe Fisher filed a complaint in federal district court of Virginia against Dr. Paul Offit, Conde Nast Publications (the publisher of Wired Magazine) and Amy Wallace (a writer for Wired) for defamation, seeking damages of $1 million.

Ms. Fisher is a public speaker, advocate and founder of the National Vaccine Information Center, a nonprofit organization "dedicated to the prevention of vaccine injuries and deaths through public education." Dr. Paul Offit is a pediatrician specializing in infectious diseases and an expert on immunology and vaccines. In a profile of Dr. Offit that ran in the November 2009 issue of Wired Magazine, Amy Wallace quoted Dr. Offit and wrote:

"Kaflooey theories" make him crazy, especially if they catch on. Fisher, who has long been the media's go-to interview for what some in the autism arena call "parents rights," makes him particularly nuts, as in "You just want to scream." The reason? "She lies," he says flatly. "Barbara Loe Fisher inflames people against me. And wrongly. I'm in this for the same reason she is. I care about kids.

In the complaint, Ms. Fisher argued that the statement "she lies" constituted libel per se because it portrayed her as a "person lacking honesty and integrity, making her a person to be shunned or excluded by those who seek information and opinion. . . ." (Compl. ¶ 29)

The judge dismissed the claim against all three defendants on March 10, 2010, writing that "a remark by one of the key participants in a heated public health debate stating that his adversary ‘lies' is not an actionable defamation." As to Dr. Offit, given that the context of the statement was of an "emotional and highly charged debate about an important public issue," the statement was understood as an "outpouring of exasperation" and was a protected expression of opinion. For Ms. Wallace and Conde Nast Publications, the "impassioned response by Defendant Offit toward Plaintiff was itself illustrative of the rough-and-tumble nature of the controversy over childhood inoculations and therefore worthy of mention of the Wired article, which sought to highlight, among other things, the intense nature of the vaccine debate."  Slip Op., No. 09-CV-1398 (E.D. Va. Mar. 10, 2010).

Slava Lerner, the President of the Galaxy Towers Condominium Association, sought pre-action discovery from Michael Deluca, publisher of GalaxyFacts, a website forum used by Galaxy Towers condo owners to discuss a variety of issues, including the Association’s governance and leadership.  Lerner sought the identities of anonymous commenters who "accused [him] of improprieties with Galaxy funds, and 'nasty personal attacks,'" Deluca told the Hudson Reporter.

Initially, a New Jersey trial judge granted Lerner's request to depose Deluca and to obtain information from the website.  Subsequently, with the help of Public Citizen, Deluca filed a motion for reconsideration, which the court granted in March 2010.  

In an oral ruling, Judge Hector Velazquez held that Rule 4:11-1, the New Jersey rule of civil procedure governing pre-suit discovery, does not authorize pre-suit discovery in order to learn the identities of potential defendants. Citing the Dendrite case, the court explained that “[New Jersey] courts have set forth a procedure whereby a party seeking to file a complaint for defamation can sue anonymous speakers even before he or she knows who they are,” adding that “in those circumstances, pre-complaint discovery would not be appropriate.” Tr. at 22. Because Lerner had not filed a John Doe complaint before seeking discovery, the court denied the requested discovery.   

On November 19, 2007, James Morrone accidentally shot a friend who was hunting with him. The friend, who was shot in the leg, survived the shooting and recovered. The Journal News published an article about the shooting with the headline: "Purchase Man Charged with Felony in Hunting Death" on its online news and communty website, www.lohud.com.

Mr. Morrone sued the Journal News and its parent company, Gannett Satellite Information Network, on November 20, 2008 in the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey. Mr. Morrone sought $500,000 in damages for defamation, intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress for the allegedly false statement that there was a "Hunting Death." (Compl. 2)

Gannett argued that the average reader would understand from reading the article as a whole that the friend did not die. Gannett also argued that if liability is based solely on the headline, the "'gist' or ‘sting' of the article—Morrone's felony charge for first-degree reckless endangerment, which included accidentally shooting his friend in the leg—is substantially true." (Reply Mem. 2)

The case was transferred to the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York on March 10, 2009.