On August 6, 2009, the Office of General Counsel at UCLA sent Tom Wilde a cease and desist letter alleging that his website, Weeding 101 at UCLA, infringed and diluted the University's registered trademark in the letters "UCLA" and that use of the UCLA name constituted "a criminal offense under California Education Code, section 92000." The letter demanded thatWilde cancel the domain name registrations for ucla-weeding101.com and ucla-weeding101.info and take down the websites located at these domains on or before August 17, 2009.  At issue was a website that Wilde launched in July 2009 that contained information about Wilde's expulsion in 1996 from UCLA's Graduate School of Education & Information Studies and critiqued UCLA's student termination policies.   

On August 14, 2009 the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) intervened by writing a response to UCLA on behalf of Wilde, objecting to UCLA's demands on First Amendment grounds. On August 20, 2009 UCLA withdrew its demands.  

In 2008, Dunne, the owner of a motorcycle repair shop in Santa Barbara sued Lara, a former customer, who published statements about the shop on DucatiSpot, a forum for Ducati motorcyle enthusiasts.  According to court documents, Lara allegedly posted comments falsely suggesting that the repair shop had been operating without required registrations and that it had been raided by the FBI.

Lara moved to strike the complaint under California's anti-SLAPP statute (Cal. Code Civ. Proc. § 425.16).  The trial court denied the motion and Lara appealed.  On appeal, in November 2009, the California Court of Appeal, Second District, held that Lara's statements were not entitled to the protection of the anti-SLAPP statute because they were not connected to an issue of public interest.  The court reasoned that Lara's comments "expressed only personal dissatisfaction about a single service provider and were not connected to an ongoing discussion on an issue of broader public interest."  Dunne v. Lara, 2009 WL 3808345 (Cal. Ct. App. Nov. 16, 2009).

Cats and Dogs Animal Hospital, Inc., a veterinary practice in Long Beach, California, brought a class action lawsuit against Yelp! Inc. in California federal court, alleging violations of California unfair competition law.

The complaint, filed on February 23, 2010, claims that Yelp! promises to manipulate user reviews in exchange for the purchase of advertising on the popular and influential consumer-review site.  In particular, the complaint alleges that Yelp! advertising employees systematically call business owners that are the subject of negative reviews and promise to remove or relocate negative reviews in exchange for monthly advertising deals.  It further alleges that members of the class were "threatened, implicitly or expressly, that if they did not purchase advertising from Yelp, their Yelp.com pages would be detrimentally manipulated, including for example, by removing positive reviews and posting new, negative reviews." The complaint relies heavily on press accounts detailing complaints from other businesses about the alleged extortionate behavior. 

Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppleman responded with a two-part blog post (part 1, part 2) vigorously disputing the allegations, saying that the plaintiff's claims are "false" and "ignore empirical evidence in favor of conspiracy theories."  In part 2 of the blog post, Stoppelman stated that "we have never and will never extort businesses; the accusation is beyond ludicrous," and offered an explanation of why some business owners might get the wrong impression:

Why might some business owners think Yelp is shady? Here's the anatomy of a typical Yelp conspiracy theory:

Step 1. Business owner gets a sales call from Yelp that explains an advertising product which seems nuanced; hears stuff like "Favorite review at top" and "Enhance your presence". Business owner eventually decides, "Thanks, but no thanks on the ads, Yelp."

Step 2. Business owner newly-exposed to Yelp decides it’s interesting and aggressively solicits all their family and friends to write reviews.

Step 3. We've already cautioned against this practice and this is why: a few days later, our automated filter suppresses the suspicious-looking reviews.

Step 4. Business assumes algorithmic process in Step 3 is actually a Yelp employee manually punishing the business for declining to advertise in Step 1.

Optional Step 5. Now-angry business finds the Orly Taitz of internet lawyers who may or may not have read about our recent funding round.

In March 2008, a New York real estate broker filed a defamation lawsuit against The Real Estate Group of New York, Inc. over comments appearing on its website's message board.

The Supreme Court of New York, New York County, denied the real estate group's motion to dismiss based on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (“Section 230”). On appeal, the Appellate Division, First Department, reversed. The court held that Section 230 barred the claim. The court explained that the complaint "makes no allegation that defendants authored any defamatory statements" and "merely alleges that defendants 'choose and administer content' that appears on the Web site," adding that "[t]his is precisely the kind of function that the CDA immunizes."

Update:

06/14/2011 - In a 4-3 decision, the New York Court of Appeals upheld the Appellate Division's ruling that Section 230 does indeed bar Shiamili's claim. The Court decided that the defendants' reposting and adding an image to the anonymous comment on their website did not constitute "developing" the allegedly defamatory content. The dissent argued that part of Section 230's purpose was to encourage website owners to voluntarily filter offensive content; reposting and highlighting offensive comments, then, should be outside Section 230's protections.

In March 2009, MagicJack, LP, the maker of an Internet telephone device and subscription service, sued the parent company of Boing Boing over a blog post by Rob Beschizza criticizing MagicJack's End-User Licensing Agreement (EULA) and various aspects of its website.

The post, published in April 2008 on Boing Boing Gadgets and titled "MagicJack's EULA says it will spy on you and force you into arbitration," notes how the MagicJack EULA purported to allow MagicJack to target ads at users based on their calls and required users to submit to arbitration. The post calls the targeted-ad provision a "systematic privacy invasion" and also makes fun of the visitor counter on MagicJack website, calling it "a fake, a javascript applet that increments itself automatically." Cory Doctorow republished the post on the Boing Boing home page under the title "MagicJack net-phone: swollen pustule of crappy terms of service and spyware."

MagicJack filed a lawsuit for defamation and "unfair competition" in California state court.  Boing Boing moved to strike the complaint under California's anti-SLAPP statute (Cal. Code Civ. Proc. § 425.16).  In May 2009, the court granted the motion to strike.  It ruled that MagicJack's claims target protected speech activity because the statements "involve consumer information affecting a large number of persons" and that posting on the Boing Boing site "provides information about [MagicJack's] product not only to the 'substantial' number of people who have already purchased the device, but also to other consumers who might be considering purchasing such a device." 

On the merits, the court held that MagicJack had not established a probability of prevailing on its claims. Regarding the homepage counter, the court found that MagicJack's own evidence "shows that the counter is not counting visitors to the website." Regarding the EULA, the court found that Boing Boing's statements, read in context, did not imply that MagicJack was eavesdropping on its customers' calls.  Rather, the court found that Beschizza's statements expressed his non-actionable opinion that "analyzing phone numbers for purposes of targeted advertising amounts to 'spy[ing],' 'snooping,' and 'systematic privacy invasion.'"

On Boing Boing's motion for attorneys' fees, the court made MagicJack pay Boing Boing's fees in the amount of $52,754 and its costs in the amount of $1,221.03. In a post announcing the victory, Beschizza indicated that the award did not quite cover Boing Boing's costs, but they're nevertheless happy with the outcome, adding "we don't like being bullied, and we wanted the chance to tell anyone else threatened by this company what to expect."

On February 1, 2010, counsel for  Miami City Commissioner Marc Sarnoff sent a demand letter to blogger Tom Falco, who publishes the Coconut Grove Grapevine.  The letter claimed that an anonymous comment to the site was false and defamatory. The comment in question was left below a blog post about a Commission hearing on bar closing times.

According to an attachment to the demand letter, the commenter pretended to leave a comment in Sarnoff's name expressing "support" for "drinking and driving after 3am even if it claims the lives of others," and signed "XOXO Marc Sarnoff." The comment appears to have been removed.

Sarnoff's demand letter stated that Falco had "a duty as the owner, editor, and publisher of the website, to police what is being posted on your website." It continued: "As such, since the post is the direct and proximate cause of injury to Commissioner Sarnoff, it is actionable against you and your website."  The letter made no mention of section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

John Robinson, a local business owner in Salisbury, Maryland, filed a defamation lawsuit against Joe Albero, rthe blogger who operates the Salisbury News. Robinson claimed that Albero harassed his family and published defamatory statements about them on his blog.  The suit named as defendant two other contributors to the blog, but CMLP has not been able to uncover further details.

Robinson also sought a "civil peace order" against Albero, which is similar to a restraining order. It is not entirely clear whether this was in a separate proceeding from the civil lawsuit. The court dismissed the petition for a peace order at a November 25, 2009 hearing.

In August 2009, USA Technologies, Inc. sued two "John Doe" defendants in Pennsylvania federal court over critical comments posted on the Yahoo! Finance message board dedicated to the company. According to EFF, the pseudonymous commenters

criticized what they claim is the consistently poor performance of USA Technologies' management. The criticism highlighted plummeting stock prices of the company as well as the high compensation rates for management of the company that has been consistently unprofitable.

Seeking the identity of the posters, USA Technologies obtained court permission to serve a subpoena on Yahoo! in California.  With the assistance of EFF, one of the commenters, John Doe "Stokklerk," filed a motion to quash the subpoena. 

In December 2009, after a hearing, the federal court in California granted the motion to quash the subpoena. Under Cal. Civ. Proc. § 1987.2, USA Technologies may be required to pay John Doe's attorneys' fees incurred in bringing the motion to quash, but there is no court order on attorneys' fees yet. 

On November 20, 2009, Thomas DeRosa, Chairman of the Forward Township Board of Supervisors, issued a subpoena seeking discovery from Richard S. Rattanni, the operator of the website elizabethboro.com, in order to identify the posters of allegedly defamatory comments on that website. The subpoena was issued as part of a lawsuit filed by DeRosa on  November 19, 2009 in the Court of Common Pleas for Allegheny County against two Doe defendants,  asserting claims for defamation.

According to news reports from the Pittsburg Tribune-Review, the at issue in the litigation are a series of anonymous posts made on the Elizabeth Area Discussion Board, hosted by the website elizabethboro.com. Also according to the Tribune-Review, the posts at issue alleged that DeRosa hired family members to perform work on a recently completed bridge repair project in the Township, and call DeRosa a liar.

The court granted DeRosa leave to seek discovery from Rattanni on November 24, 2009.  On January 6, 2010, the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania filed a motion for protective order seeking to squash the subpoena on behalf of Rattanni.

Update:

03/03/10 - The court held a hearing on Rattanni's motion to quash.  According to one press account, the court determined that Rattanni had standing to assert the First Amendment rights of his readers.

Eric Hvide sued eight anonymous Yahoo and America Online posters for defamation in Florida state court after the posters criticized Hvide's running of Hvide Marine, Inc.  The record is sketchy, but it appears the court ordered disclosure of the commenters' identities despite motions to quash filed by several of them.  Hvide later added Gavin Blunt and Wentworth Capital Inc. as defendants, but voluntarily dismissed the case in early 2003.