Copyright & Trademarks - SES San Jose 2005

I love the legal aspects of search. It's intriguing to see how old laws are applied to this new medium, sometimes usefully, sometimes showing how archaic they are. Jeffrey K. Rohrs of Optiem loves the legal aspect as well. He was one of our earliest SES attendees and a recovering attorney who asked me way back when if I thought our audiences would like a panel on legal issues. Would they ever, I said! I'd done a "hands up" audience poll not too long before this and found that plenty of people wanted to know about search and the law.

Jeffrey's been diligently pulling together panels on various legal issues for years now at the show. Copyright & Trademarks is a new one for SES San Jose 2005. It will revisit some of the common issues that come up about bidding for ads to show up for terms that are also trademarks, something we've explored before. But it will also take a deep look at copyright issues. How can you keep links to infringing material out of search engines and what to do if someone says you're infringing? The panel will explore.

Eric Goldman, Assistant Professor of Law, Marquette University School of Law and Deborah A. Wilcox, Partner, Baker & Hostetler are two great legal experts we've had in the past on our legal panels, bringing their thoughts and experience to this session. Joining them is Jennifer Slegg of JenSense.com, AKA Jenstar who moderates at our SEW Forums, where she recently posted a ton of advice for those who find their content has been stolen.