We understand that you are planning a public event on May 21, 2013, at which you will discuss your experiences and your "unflattering portrayals" on the show. If you speak about the show without Upper Ground's and Fox's prior approval, and if you disparage the show, its host, or its producers, you will breach your obligations under Paragraph 10 of your Personal Release and Paragraph 14 of your Participant Agreement. These agreements prohibit you from speaking publicly about Kitchen Nighmares, other than to acknowledge "the mere fact of your participation in the Series in personal publicity relating to yourself." Your conduct exposes each of you to liability for liquidated damages of $100,000.

When pervasive advertisements from a local merchant feature prices that seem to be just too good to be true, they may, in fact, not be the price that the average consumer will pay. Dozens of consumers who have used pseudonyms to post about their experiences with appellee Hadeed Carpet Cleaning, Inc. (“Hadeed”) on the popular website www.yelp.com, maintained by appellant Yelp Inc. (“Yelp”), report that Hadeed routinely fails to honor the advertised discount prices. Hadeed’s responses to several consumers on Yelp suggest that it recognizes the problem; yet its complaint for defamation singles out the authors of seven reviews posted on Yelp that say the same thing as the other online detractors of Hadeed and its sister business, Hadeed Oriental Rug Cleaning. Based on that allegation, Hadeed invoked the court’s subpoena power to strip its pseudonymous critics of their First Amendment right to speak anonymously.

The main question on this appeal—an issue of first impression at the appellate level in Virginia—is whether the trial court applied the proper legal standard in overriding the anonymous speakers’ First Amendment rights. Courts elsewhere have recognized that, given the valuable role played by the First Amendment right to speak anonymously in encouraging ordinary people to express themselves fully, it is necessary to balance that right against a plaintiff’s right to seek redress for wrongful speech by adopting a standard requiring a plaintiff to do more than articulate a good faith belief that the speech “maybe tortious.” Before stripping the defendant of a First Amendment right, these courts take an early look at the merits of the plaintiff’s claim to determine whether a valid claim has been alleged and whether there is a prima facie evidentiary basis for that claim. In this appeal, Yelp urges Virginia to adopt the same approach, and to remand this case to give Hadeed an opportunity to pursue its subpoena by meeting the proper standard.

Thus, even in jurisdictions that allow an injunction against the repetition of a libel that has been found false and defamatory after a full trial, or in which that issue remains open, injunctions may not issue against speech that has not been finally determined to be false and defamatory. For this reason, courts have rejected attempts to obtain preliminary injunctive relief against Internet speech.

Upon further consideration whereof, the Court also finds that the preliminary injunction was not justified and that the respondents have an adequate remedy at law.

Someone decided enough was enough and decided to get some good reviews at CitySearch where they now have a majority of good reviews, except there’s a problem, they’re not real reviews. You may ask how I can say that with so much confidence? Go look at them yourself, one after another… notice how most names are generic or don’t have a human photo? Yes that’s level 1 of suspicious reviews. Start looking at the reviews the “people” have left. It’s quite a coincidence that so many people who have used a Boston moving company have also loved a sprinkler repair guy in Anaheim, California and Fun Hawaii Travel out of Honolulu.

They also have a flurry of activity in August of 2012 – Aug 1, 2, 6, 7, 9, 11, 12, 14. That seems a bit sketchy as well.

What is going on at the Patent and Trademark Office?  For decades, folks have been complaining (with good reason) that the patent examiners need to do a better job of screening out bogus patent applications. It’s clear that the problem extends to the trademark side as well. The PTO has allowed companies and individuals to register marks in any number of obviously generic and/or descriptive terms, such as “urban homestead” (to refer to urban farms), “gaymer” (to refer to gay gamers), and “B-24” (to refer to model B-24 bombers).

Once a mark is registered, it is all too easy for the owner to become a trademark bully. And while companies like Yelp have the resources to fight back (as we expect it will), small companies and individuals may not. Just as dangerous, the trademark owner may go upstream, to intermediaries like Facebook who have little incentive to do anything other than take down an account or site that’s accused of infringement.

Path, Inc., Twitter, Inc., Apple, Inc., Facebook, Inc., Beluga, Inc. ., Yelp! Inc., Burbn, Inc., Instagram, Inc., Foursquare Labs, Inc., Gowalla Incorporated, Foodspotting, Inc., Hipster, Inc., LinkedIn Corporation, Rovio Mobile Oy, ZeptoLab UK Limited aka ZeptoLab, Chillingo Ltd., Electronic Arts Inc., and Kik Interactive, Inc.,

Amateur instant online restaurant critics -- specifically those who write reviews for a website that rhymes with "kelp." Think about it: They review a McDonald's and then turn around and review Mizuna. I just imagine bored, jobless layabouts with not many friends who are convinced that they're going to have a bad time before they even step through the door of a joint. The kicker is, you can't respond to these inbreds and try to educate, or at least explain, why some things happen the way they happen. Have a little fun, for chrissakes. Loosen up when you go out, and let me be the stress ball in the kitchen busting my ass for twelve-plus hours trying to make you the best food I can. Fuck you!

However, the CDA doesn't contemplate protecting Yelp's use of speech as leverage in its business model. Reit alleged that Yelp provided deceptive terms on its website, encouraging both businesses and individual users to believe that the reviews are not manipulated by Yelp. Also, Reit alleged that Yelp's sales force used negative reviews on the site as leads for new ad business, and that sales reps told business owners that, if they paid for ads, the reps would assist in deleting negative reviews. But if a business owner refuses, Yelp would delete positive reviews. Yelp's guide for business owners stated "We remove the guesswork by screening out reviews that are written by less established users. The process is entirely automated to avoid human bias," and yet the system is not entirely automated. This allegedly deceived the public by representing that reviews are ordered, reviewed and removed by computers, and not manipulated by people. Reit referred to class action suits against Yelp of which he is not a member, and did not allege that he was a victim of this conduct.

The General Business Law bars deceptive acts or practices in the conduct of business and false advertising, giving a private right of action to any person who's been injured; a plaintiff need not be a consumer, but must allege consumer-oriented conduct that is materially misleading and that resulted in injury. However, the identified statement by Yelp isn't addressed to individual consumers seeking dentists, but to business owners. "Yelp's statement is not materially misleading to a reasonable consumer seeking dentistry, and is not a deceptive practice." Likewise, deleting postings for the purpose of selling ads would be business conduct, not consumer oriented conduct. Thus, the claim was dismissed.

Businesses can no longer buy a "Favorite Review" like they could before -- so that there's no confusion over businesses being able to influence reviews by paying Yelp. This sounds like a pretty big step towards making it clear that companies can't just buy better reviews, but what does this mean for companies that formerly bought "Favorite Reviews?" Those companies are being penalized with the unexpected removal of this service, and there's still no guarantee that ratings can't be manipulated by cunning business owners or competitors. Though, the conspiracy theorists may never actually be satisfied on this point, and gaming online rating systems will likely always be a nagging concern.

Yelp is still keeping its review filtering algorithms a secret, but it will now display reviews that have been removed by its automated filters in an effort to allow users to see a bit of the reviews that Yelp deems suspicious or untrustworthy. However, Yelp is not exactly highlighting these filtered-out reviews -- just making them available to be viewed in case anyone is curious to see what kind of reviews are tossed out on a regular basis.

Yelp is adding video ads as a service for businesses -- presumably to offset the loss of its "Favorite Review" feature.

Yelp says it's created a Small Business Advisory Council for companies to give feedback to Yelp management. This is an interesting development, but it's not exactly easy to find out more information on how this council works. Granted, it was just announced, but its announcement seems to lack a bit of commitment when there aren't any obvious links about it on yelp.com (yet?).

One way to look at this is as a multi-sided market. Traditional media outlets, for example, operate in a two-sided market, where they trade content for eyeballs, and then sell the eyeballs to an advertiser. Yelp's business model is similar, except that they exist in a three-sided market. First, they have to make the site appealing enough to reviewers that they'll write a lot of reviews. Then they use the reviews to attract eyeballs, which they finally sell to advertisers. All three of these are "customers" in some sense, but because the reviewers are what ultimately attracts everyone else to the site, they're ultimately the most important to the site's long-term success. Although Yelp certainly has its share of critics, the basic strategy of catering to reviewers seems like the right one for a review-oriented site.