Posted in Congress, Consumer Protection, Litigation, Product Safety on July 2, 2008 | No Comments »
From Graham Steele and David Arkush @ Watchdog Blog: Far too often, the press covers civil justice issues purely as battles between special interests — business versus “the trial lawyers” — without much discussion on how the policies at issue would affect the public. We weren’t surprised when the Wall Street Journal presented our opposition [...]
Posted in Congress, Consumer Protection, Health, Litigation, Pharmaceuticals, Product Safety on June 26, 2008 | No Comments »
Maybe, the founding fathers actually knew what they were doing when they set up a system of checks and balances that ensure that no one branch of our government can become too powerful. We see examples all the time where the President and Congress clash over issues or where the U.S. Supreme Court weighs in [...]
Posted in Free Speech, Internet, Litigation on June 18, 2008 | 1 Comment »
The Associated Press unleashed a firestorm in the blogosphere last week when it claimed that Drudge Retort, a left-wing alternative to the conservative blog Drudge Report, had committed copyright infringement by linking to and briefly quoting several AP articles. Bloggers everywhere were surprised to learn that the AP expects bloggers to pay for the privilege [...]
Posted in Free Speech, Internet, Litigation on June 17, 2008 | 3 Comments »
In a victory for the free speech rights of bloggers, Kentucky has settled a lawsuit with political blogger Mark Nickolas, whose critical comments about then-Governor Ernie Fletcher resulted in the state “blacklisting” all blogs on state-owned computers. Under the settlement, Kentucky officials agreed to no longer single out blogs for special treatment.
Public Citizen filed suit [...]
Posted in Litigation, Trade on June 10, 2008 | No Comments »
The Supreme Court yesterday issued an important decision involving patents that, although technical in nature, may end up becoming an important victory for consumers. In recent years, companies have increasingly attempted to use their patents on products to limit what people can do with those products after buying them. For example, companies attach “not for [...]
Posted in Consumer Protection, Internet, Litigation, tagged Internet, software, autodesk, design on May 23, 2008 | No Comments »
There’s some buzz about our win this week against Autodesk and its attempt to keep entrepreneur Timothy Vernor from selling second-hand copies of its software on eBay. A federal judge refused to dismiss Vernor’s lawsuit against Autodesk and in doing so made it pretty clear that Vernor had a right to sell legally obtained, copyrighted [...]
Posted in Internet, Litigation on May 21, 2008 | 3 Comments »
When Seattle resident Tim Vernor put a used copy of software for sale on eBay, the software’s maker, Autodesk, demanded that eBay cancel the listing. Although Vernor was selling an authentic, original copy of Autodesk’s software, the company pointed to a “license agreement” contained in the software’s box that prohibited anyone from selling or giving [...]
Posted in Internet, Litigation, Open Government, Trade on May 21, 2008 | No Comments »
Journalist and blogger Ed Brayton (left) was a little curious after the U.S. government struck a deal with the European Union and other countries that compensates them in exchange for the U.S. passing online gambling laws that interfere with international trade as governed by the World Trade Organization. Brayton, who also happens to be an [...]
Posted in Congress, Consumer Protection, Health, Litigation, Pharmaceuticals, Product Safety, tagged celebrities, Dennis Quaid, drug safety, FDA, Heparin on May 14, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Photo by Bridgette Blair
Taking a mislabeled drug or using a defective medical device is a dangerous thing. Just ask actor Dennis Quaid and his wife, Kimberly.
In November 2007, their newborn twins were given a massive overdose of Heparin, an anticoagulant drug. The twins were supposed to receive another drug that would ease the intravenous administration [...]
Posted in Consumer Protection, Free Speech, Internet, Litigation on May 5, 2008 | No Comments »
Public Citizen racked up another victory for Internet free speech last week when a federal judge in Michigan dismissed a trademark claim filed by a Michigan company against the consumer Web site InformercialScams.com. Lifestyle Lift, which markets cosmetic surgery through infomercials, was trying to make the somewhat ludicrous assertion that InfomercialScams couldn’t use its name [...]
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