Over the years, we've been threatened with defamation lawsuits more times than I'd like to recall, though nothing has ever come of any of them (even the latest threat, which seemed more likely to end up in court than others). Apparently, we're not alone. Filing highly questionable defamation lawsuits is apparently the hot new Hollywood trend.

Everyone who's someone is getting in on the action. Of course, almost all of these lawsuits are unlikely to get very far. Defamation of a public figure has to involve "actual malice" rather than just false statements, and it's pretty rare that any of the statements rise to that level. And, really, so many of the claims seem pretty ridiculous anyone, in that no one is actually taking them at face value. Take, for example, Lindsay Lohan's latest ridiculous defamation lawsuit against the rapper Pitbull for including the line: "I got locked up like Lindsay Lohan." Lohan's lawyers are claiming that such a "disparaging or defamatory" lyric is "destined to do irreparable harm." Seriously? Does no one put these things through a reality filter?

Of course, Lohan is also the celeb who once sued E*Trade for $100 million, because one of its commercials referenced a baby named "Lindsay," who was described as a "milkaholic." Nothing in the ad implied that this baby "Lindsay" had anything to do with Lohan. But she still sued.

Like certain other laws, the root cause of defamation laws seem to make a lot of sense. If someone is publishing or saying completely false things about you, shouldn't there be some form of recourse? But, as we see more and more of these ridiculous claims, I'm beginning to wonder if defamation law really makes much sense any more. It made a lot of sense when you had gatekeepers for getting information out to the world. If a newspaper lied about you and there was no way to get your response published, defamation lawsuits could help solve that. But, today, anyone can publish and anyone can speak up. In fact, there are stories all the time about "big bad things" that people or companies do to others.

In an age where most of the gatekeepers are disappearing, it seems like the answer to defamatory speech should really be "more speech," in all but the most extreme cases. Instead, even though the "actual malice" standard should forestall most of these suits, we get dozens of such lawsuits that seem to be because someone's feelings are hurt. That's not what defamation law is about, and it seems more like such lawsuits should qualify for anti-SLAPP sanctions, as they too often appear to be attempts to get someone saying something that's "not nice" to shut up.

Mike Wokasch accidentally alerted us to the news that Twitter is being sued for patent infringement over what may be one of the most ridiculous patents we've seen in a long time. The patent, 6,408,309, is for a "method and system for creating an interactive virtual community of famous people." And yes, the USPTO actually approved this.

Reading through the claims, however, not only suggest that this patent never should have gotten anywhere near being approved, but also raises serious questions about how Twitter infringes. What's patented sounds more like a community in which people compete to be recognized as leaders in specific fields. Twitter is just a communications platform -- it has very little of what's actually described in the claims of the patent. But for the regular patent system defenders in the crowd, can someone explain how this could possibly be seen as patentable? An interactive virtual community of famous people? Seriously?

Wokasch also points out that the "inventor" (and I use that term loosely) is a patent attorney himself. Amusingly, the copyright notice on his website says "Copyright 1999 - 2001" suggesting it's not updated very often.

A new research report claims that celebrity endorsements in the form of TV commercials are almost always a bad deal for the brand. The study covered every nationally televised ad in the first 11 months of 2010 -- and saw that ones with celebrities underperformed other types of ads, often drastically. On average, celebrity ads had a negative "lift," while non-celebrity ads did much better. Of course, you can hide a lot of details in aggregate numbers, and part of it might just be that the celebrity ads were done poorly. It's possible that a good celebrity ad can still be effective, but what seems clear is that "just add a celebrity" does not help at all. The study's authors posit that consumers don't care as much about celebrity endorsements in these social networking days:

Today's consumer is a totally different animal than the consumer of even five years ago, meaning that what was effective and influential five years ago is not necessarily so today, as today's consumer is more likely to be influenced by someone in their social network than a weak celebrity connection. Today's consumer is informed, time-compressed, and difficult to impress, and they are only influenced by ads that are relevant and provide information. They don't want to have products pushed at them, even from a celebrity. In fact, the data show that relevance and information attributes were key missing ingredients from most celebrity ads.

I'm not sure I completely buy that. After all, celebrities are some of the most popular people to follow or friend on social networks. I think it may be more a case of poor utilization of celebrities, where the endorsements are seen (reasonably and accurately) as being fake, rather than sincere. I think when a celebrity really does like a product and then also agrees to do an endorsement, those can be effective. But a pure "let's put this celebrity with this product" sort of thing is quickly dismissed as inauthentic.

The FTC's highly questionable disclosure rules have been in effect for a bit over a month now, and it appears that even the FTC doesn't understand who they apply to or how they apply. And that's the problem. Apparently, someone noticed that actress Gwyneth Paltrow lavished praise on a resort in Marrakech, Morocco, and wondered if Paltrow had paid for her stay there -- noting that it was the grand opening of the place, with lots of stars -- and Hollywood publicists asked about this said there was "not a chance in hell" that someone like Paltrow paid to attend. In fact, they wonder if Paltrow was even paid for her "appearance." So, how do the FTC rules apply? She was pitching a place that most likely gave her something quite valuable for free. That should be disclosed, right? That was the whole point of the FTC rules, right? Well, maybe not. When asked about it, the FTC hemmed and hawed and claimed that "celebrity endorsements are different." Why? Because consumers might "understand that celebrities are always getting free stuff." Right, but wasn't the whole reason that these new disclosure rules were instituted in the first place that bloggers and others were supposedly (though, I believe it to be exaggerated) "always getting free stuff" too? Basically, these FTC rules sound like the sorts of things that are totally subjective, whereby the FTC can crack down on someone they don't like if they have nothing else to use, but will leave others untouched.

Proving, once again, that common sense isn't so common, News.com is reporting on a series of orders handed down by judges in Argentina that have forced Google and Yahoo to completely block searches on certain Argentinian celebrities. Apparently, some Argentinian models who were upset that their pictures were showing up on some porn sites, sued both Yahoo and Google. For anyone who understands just about anything about how the internet works, it would be easy to recognize that this lawsuit was grossly mistargeted. Yahoo and Google have nothing to do with the content on the various websites they point to, but apparently Argentinian models and judges do not seem to recognize this.

So, the judges issued an injunction, demanding that Google and Yahoo block references to the models. This "win" caused other Argentinian celebrities who were upset with content online about them to seek out the same lawyer, who filed similar lawsuits over and over again. Each time, the court has issued an injunction, forcing Google and Yahoo to block results on those individuals. In some cases, they've tried to block specific results, but in at least one case, Yahoo has blocked all results on a search for Argentinian soccer star Diego Maradona. The blocks only impact the Argentinian sites, but it still seems fairly ridiculous.

Google is appealing the injunctions, saying that this really seems like something of a shakedown. The company is also trying to explain to the Argentinian government why it should put in place safe harbor laws that protect service providers from being liable for the content created by others. Of course, even without such laws in place, common sense should prevail. Apparently, though, common sense remains less common than commonly believed.

Back during the first dot com boom, you may recall that various startups started to suddenly find "celebrity" front men, from Whoopi Goldberg touting "Flooz" to William Shatner pitching Priceline. This time around, it appears that the various Hollywood celebrities are perhaps a bit more involved in various web startups, but does it matter beyond getting an initial burst of press? Liz Gannes, over at GigaOm, has a good look at the rise of "celebrity" startup founders, noting that while there are a bunch of Hollywood folks jumping in and starting web companies, not many of them have done all that well (at best, a few are muddling along). Apparently, unlike Hollywood, having a big name star isn't all that's needed to make something a success. It also needs a plan that works.