Intellectual Property Law

Anonymity Shield Lowered by 9th Circuit for Commercial Speech

By Steve Cosentino

The 9th circuit held recently that a lower standard would apply for releasing the name of an anonymous internet poster.  The Cahill standard of requiring enough facts to prove a hypothetical summary judgmentnt motion was found to be too stringent for commercial speech. Evan Brown over at Internet Cases recently posted a good summary of of the case on his blog.   While the important protections that anonymity provide in the context of free speech is certainly important, attorneys wrestling with the difficulty of combating commercial defamation will find this case to be an important tool in the small library of cases in this area.

Full post as published by The TechKnowledgy Blog on July 20, 2010 (boomark / email).