Legally Insightful

Jurisdiction: United States; historical case commentary. Reviewed 27 October 2026. The Tiffany/Costco dispute is a useful example of the difference between overturning summary judgment and finally deciding that conduct is lawful. It concerns trade marks and alleged counterfeiting, not the loss of copyright through a generic brand name. The label at issue Costco used “Tiffany” in descriptions of rings. Tiffany challenged that use, while Costco contended that the term described a setting and raised a descriptive fair-use defence. The legal question required attention to the actual signs, consumer understanding and context. What the appeal decided On 17 August 2020, the Second Circuit vacated the judgment against Costco and remanded for further proceedings. It found factual questions suitable for trial concerning confusion, good faith and the defence. It did not conclusively hold that no reasonable jury could ever find for Tiffany, or cancel the Tiffany brand. Later development Reuters re...

Jurisdiction: United States; historical case commentary. Reviewed 27 October 2026. Leah Bassett’s case concerned artworks visible in films made at her rented home. The legal point is about the artworks and the particular uses, not a rule that a property owner automatically owns copyright in everything filmed inside a house. Separate the stages of the case The May 2020 opinion considered several claims and required more precise evidence concerning appearances of the works. A later August 2020 decision was reported as granting summary judgment on copyright liability. Liability and the amount of damages are different questions: this article does not report a verified final damages amount. Originality and useful objects US law can protect original artistic expression while treating functional features differently. Decorating an object does not automatically make all of the object’s function copyrightable. A room also may contain works by different owners. Fair use and incidental appearance...

Jurisdiction: Australia; historical case commentary. Reviewed 27 October 2026. A booking platform’s handling of data and reviews can create consumer-law issues as well as privacy questions. ACCC v HealthEngine [2020] FCA 1203 should not be reduced to a rule that a privacy policy permits every disclosed practice. Patient referrals HealthEngine admitted giving non-clinical personal information about more than 135,000 patients to private health insurance brokers between April 2014 and June 2018 without adequately disclosing that conduct. The ACCC reported more than $1.8 million earned from those arrangements. Brokers and insurers are not interchangeable descriptions of the recipients. Reviews and ratings The case also concerned the suppression and editing of patient reviews in a way that misled users. The important issue was the impression of genuine patient feedback, not a rule that every moderation decision is prohibited. Orders and practical lessons The Federal Court ordered $2.9 milli...

Jurisdiction: Australia; historical case commentary. Reviewed 27 October 2026. Berry v CCL Secure Pty Ltd [2020] HCA 27 concerns lost commissions following misleading conduct in a banknote-related agency arrangement. “Money fabrication” in the original headline refers to banknote manufacture, not an allegation that the claimants counterfeited money. The agreement and the misleading conduct Dr Benoy Berry and Global Secure Currency were involved in an agency arrangement concerning Nigeria. The dispute arose after misleading conduct induced termination of the arrangement. The statutory claim concerned former s52 of the Trade Practices Act 1974, with damages under s82—not s2 as the earlier article stated. The counterfactual question The damages dispute asked what would have happened without the misleading conduct, including whether the agreement would have been lawfully terminated anyway. An available lawful route is not the same as evidence that it would actually have been used. The orde...

Jurisdiction: Australia; historical case commentary. Reviewed 27 October 2026. Online reviews can raise consumer-law and defamation questions, but those are different legal regimes. A platform cannot safely treat a business-written review as a customer’s independent view merely because the customer did not object. Service Seeking In July 2020 the Federal Court ordered Service Seeking to pay $600,000 in civil penalties. Its Fast Feedback feature allowed businesses to draft reviews and star ratings, then published them if the customer did not respond within three days. The ACCC reported about 21,000 reviews created through the feature, with about 17,000 automatically published without customer input. That is not a finding that 80% of every review on the entire site was fake. Identification is not a defamation judgment Kabbabe v Google [2020] FCA 126 concerned preliminary steps to identify a prospective respondent and serve proceedings. It was not a final finding that the disputed review ...