March 2, 2010The federal government infringed on the copyright of the person who designed the Korean War Memorial in Washington, D.C., when the postal service issued a stamp showing the memorial’s soldiers on a snowy day. Frank Gaylord, who designed

A federal lawsuit accuses a Pennsylvania school district of using school-issued laptops to spy on students and their families using an embedded webcam, thus violating their right to privacy.  The lawsuit contends that that Lower Merion School District gave each high school student a laptop to use in school and at home but did not tell the students that the laptop had a webcam that the school could activate at any time to take pictures of the students and anything else within range.

A former Bimbo Bakeries executive’s plan to go to work for a competitor turned into a recipe for an injunction.  Chris Botticella, a former vice president of operations for California for Bimbo, decided to take a similar position with Interstate Brands Corporation a predecessor company to Hostess Brands, Inc. His actions following the decision to become vice president for bakery operations were less than stellar.

There is no reasonable expectation of privacy for the content in files stored in a computer linked to an unsecured Wi-Fi connection, even if the access to the network is not authorized. An Oregon federal court denied a motion to suppress evidence found on a convicted sex offender’s computer. A neighbor of the defendant used without permission the defendant’s unsecured Wi-Fi connection. While on the defendant’s network, the neighbor opened an iTunes file and discovered pornographic material. The neighbor then called police who replicated the neighbor’s actions, saw the pornographic material, and then obtained a court order to search the defendant’s computer. The defendant was charged with transportation and possession of child pornography.

 Electronic Arts, Inc.’s use of likenesses of former NCAA football players in NCAA Football are too close to the real athletes to be protected by the First Amendment, a California federal court found.  A former NCAA quarterback brought a case against the NCAA and Electronic Arts (EA) alleging that, by incorporating his likeness into video games, the NCAA and EA violated his right to publicity and were unjustly enriched.

A Pennsylvania couple’s battle with Google’s street view function remains barely alive thanks to a U.S. Court of Appeals’ ruling that there was a technical trespass when the images were taken. Aaron and Christine Boring originally sued Google for various counts of invasion of privacy, unjust enrichment and trespass. Google had taken images of the couple’s house by driving on the couple’s private driveway that was posted with no trespassing signs. The images were uploaded to Google’s street view but later were taken down.

A Cook County judge ruled that a tweet by a tenant was not defamatory as a matter of law.  Judge Diane Larsen found that the tweet, “who said sleeping in a moldy apartment was bad for you? Horizon realty thinks it’s okay,” was susceptible of innocent construction and not defamatory per se as a matter of law. A tweet is a posting on a page on Twitter.com that is limited to 140 characters.

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 The subjects of defamatory statements cannot force Ripoff.com to remove the posts from the website.A federal judge found that the Communications Decency Act (CDA) limits the ability of an aggrieved party to sue an internet host for defamatory statements posted on its website by third parties. The plaintiffs in the case attempted to circumvent this provision by suing the authors and compelling them to take down the posts. When the posters were not found, the plaintiffs attempted to enforce the court’s order against Ripoff.com.

 In response to freedom of information requests, governmental agencies must turn over the metadata associated with public documents kept in electronic form, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled.  The issue arose after the City of Phoenix refused to turn over metadata of the performance reports of a police officer. The police officer believed that the notes were backdated and wanted the metadata to determine when the notes were made. The City contended that while the documents were subject to the state’s freedom of information law (FOIA), the meta data was not. The City did not dispute that the paper documents were subject to a FOIA request.

While teachers do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their classrooms under federal law, school districts in Illinois cannot audio tape what teachers say in the classrooms, an Illinois appellate court found. The Board of Education for Freeport School District No. 145 sought to audio and videotape teachers in two special education classrooms after parents raised concerns about the safety of their children following allegations of abuse by a former teacher. The current teachers sought to block the audio recording under the Illinois Eavesdropping Act, 720 ILCS 5/14-2(a)(1). The statute generally prohibits the audio taping of conversations without all parties’ consent.