Legion of Angels News Archive

Lute Olson will step down immediately as head coach of the Arizona men’s basketball team, FOXSports.com has confirmed.

The news, which was initially reported by ESPN’s Dick Vitale, was confirmed by a source close to the program.

Olson has not officially informed the team yet. Associate coach Mike Dunlap, a former national championship-winning coach at Division II Metro State and an assistant with the Denver Nuggets, will take over on an interim basis.

It’s highly unlikely Dunlap will be named the head coach permanently until the end of the season at earliest, due to the debacle last season with Kevin O’Neill.

O’Neill had been hired as an assistant before last season, with the intention that he would take over for Olson when he retired. O’Neill was then pressed into interim head coaching duty when Olson took a leave of absence for personal reasons. When Olson decided to return to the program, a rift developed between the two and O’Neill was eventually let go.

Olson, 74, will retire 20 wins shy of 800 for his career. He won a national championship with Arizona in 1997.

Source — FOX Sports

eBay cannot be forced to police its auction listings to identify counterfeit Tiffany & Co. products, a federal judge ruled on Monday in a lawsuit brought by the iconic 171-year-old jewelry company.

In what could become a landmark case for auction Web sites, the court said trademark law cannot be used to force eBay to shoulder the burden of examining individual auction listings for possible counterfeits.

“The court is not unsympathetic to Tiffany and other rights holders who have invested enormous resources in developing their brands, only to see them illicitly and efficiently exploited by others on the Internet,” wrote U.S. District Judge Richard Sullivan. “Nevertheless, the law is clear: it is the trademark owner’s burden to police its mark.”

Tiffany attorney James Swire, a partner at Arnold & Porter, said he would be surprised if his client did not appeal. Swire said “the purpose of trademark law is to prevent consumer confusion and to protect the trademark owner…and I don’t believe that purpose was honored by the judge’s ruling.”

For now, though, the decision relieves eBay–and companies such as Amazon.com, Yahoo, and Google that provide auction listings or product search results–of what would have been a significant financial burden and legal uncertainty. In the last few years, French courts have ordered eBay and Google to pay fines for trademark breach; a decision last month led to a $61 million fine for eBay that went to fashion giant LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton.

It’s not an insignificant problem: the U.S. Department of Homeland Security says counterfeiting is an “economic pandemic” that costs the U.S. economy more than $200 billion a year. Counterfeit goods may be manufactured domestically or imported through fraudulent shipping documents.

The lawsuit, which was filed in the southern district of New York, is not about whether counterfeit goods will be permitted on eBay (they’re not, and trafficking in counterfeit goods is even a criminal offense). Rather, the debate is about whether the product manufacturer or the auction site should bear the cost of policing eBay listings for fakes.

For its part, eBay says it spends $5 million a year in maintaining its fraud search engine, which has 13,000 rules that are designed to identify counterfeit listings based on words such as “replica” or “knock-off.” Listings flagged by the search engine are manually reviewed by customer service representatives.

In addition, eBay offers a Verified Rights Owner (”VeRO”) program that lets trademark owners report and remove infringing listings. Tiffany is one of more than 14,000 companies and individuals participating in the VeRO program.

Making matters tricky is that it’s perfectly legal to resell noncounterfeit Tiffany jewelry, with or without the famous blue boxes. And because eBay doesn’t review the actual merchandise, which is exchanged directly between buyer and seller, it may not be able to identify illicit merchandise based only on the information provided in the auction listing.

In 2003, Tiffany’s lawyers contacted eBay and said that because their client uses no third-party vendors, “any seller” of “five pieces or more of purported ‘Tiffany’ jewelry is almost certainly selling counterfeit merchandise” and the listing should be automatically deleted. eBay replied: “What you have asked us to do is to consider listings ‘apparently infringing’ simply because the seller is offering multiple Tiffany items. That we are not prepared to do at this time.” A year later, Tiffany asked eBay to ban the sale of all silver “Tiffany” jewelry; eBay refused.

On Monday, Judge Sullivan put an end to that argument: “As a factual matter, there is little support for Tiffany’s allegation that a seller listing five or more pieces of Tiffany jewelry is presumptively trafficking in counterfeit goods.” In addition, Sullivan concluded that eBay always removed listings promptly after receiving notification from Tiffany, and noted that eBay delayed listings of Tiffany products by 6 to 12 hours to provide time for a manual review.

“There is no dispute that eBay was generally aware that counterfeit Tiffany jewelry was being listed and sold on eBay even prior to Tiffany’s initial demand letter,” Sullivan wrote. But he said that because “eBay does not continue to supply its services to those whom it knows, or has reason to know, are infringing Tiffany’s trademarks,” generalized knowledge is not enough to make the auction site liable.

The debate over whether Web companies should be held liable for what their users post is hardly new: It’s been at the heart of some of the most bitter legal battles in the last decade. Those involve recent free-speech cases involving FriendFinder, Craigslist, and Roommates.com. Viacom’s pursuit of YouTube through the court system is in a slightly different category because it involves intellectual-property law and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The extent to which trademark law restricts auction listings has been, until now, somewhat unclear.

There is one irony in this hard-fought legal battle, which has involved top-tier law firms and has almost certainly cost both sides millions of dollars in fees. Tiffany filed suit four years ago, when the auction site remained primarily focused on small sellers and before its new deal with Buy.com that has angered the eBay-faithful.

Because eBay is trying to compete with Amazon.com (with an enviable stock price performance over the last two years, compared to eBay), by working with larger sellers, it may not have taken precisely the same hard line, if those letters from Tiffany had arrived today.

Source — CNET

ATHENS (AP) - Usain Bolt, the 100-meter world record holder, ran the fastest time in the 200 this year, winning in 19.67 seconds Sunday at the Tsiklitiria Athens Grand Prix.

The 21-year-old Jamaican is now the fifth fastest man of all time in the 200. His time was the sixth best ever, with world record holder Michael Johnson having twice run faster.

“I am very satisfied with my performance,” Bolt said. “I feel sure I will be very strong at the Olympic Games.”

Although he started slowly, Bolt had recovered as he came out of the curve, winning by a wide margin ahead of Brendan Christian of Antigua, who was second in 20.36.

Bolt ran 9.72 to set the 100 world record in New York in May. He didn’t run the 100 in Athens.

Bolt has previously said he is unsure whether he will compete in both the 100 and 200 at the Beijing Olympics next month.

Asked if he would be going for the 200 world record of 19.32, which Johnson set in August 1996, Bolt said not yet.

“Not this year, maybe next,” he said.

The Jamaican also had the previous best time of the year in the 200, running 19.83 in June in Ostrava, Czech Republic. Sunday’s time beat his personal best of 19.75, set at altitude last year.

In the 100, Derrick Atkins of the Bahamas won in 10.10, finishing ahead of Darvis Patton and Mark Jelks of the United States.

“This is my second win in a row here in Athens and I am very proud,” Atkins said.

Atkins, runner-up at last year’s World Championships, surged in the second half of the race to win easily. Fearing disqualification after a false start, the sprinters were slow getting out of the blocks and ran into a slight head wind.

“(I was) tired after strong races at the U.S. champs,” Patton said. “My next race will be in London. In Beijing, I want to win a medal.”

In the 110 hurdles, world record holder Dayron Robles set a meet record by winning in 13.04 seconds.

“Getting the Olympic gold medal is the most important thing to me, because it’s something you can only do every four years,” the Cuban said. “I know Liu (Xiang) will be difficult to beat. The people love him in China and he’s a good person.”

Robles ran a 12.87 last month, bettering Liu’s previous mark of 12.89.

Olympic champion Stefan Holm of Sweden won the high jump with a world-best mark this year of 7 feet, 9 1/4 inches.

“I always jump well in Greece,” Holm said. “I hope I will be strong in Beijing, too.”

Sanya Richards of the United States won the women’s 400 comfortably in 49.86 seconds.

“I was very strong,” she said. “I did not face any problems. I aim for the Olympic gold.”

American pole vaulter Brad Walker won by clearing 19 feet, 4 1/4 inches, but failed to break his own U.S. record of 19-9 3/4, set this year.

In the women’s 100, Veronica Campbell of Jamaica won in 10.92 to equal the meet record set in 1999.

“I’m satisfied with my race,” said Campbell, the 200 Olympic champion. “I train very hard and I hope to stay healthy in order to achieve my goal in Beijing. I adore Athens, I run my best races here.”

Campbell is to run the 200 and the 400 relay, but not the 100, at the Beijing Games next month.

In the men’s 400 hurdles, Louis Van Zyl of South Africa won in 48.22 seconds, the third best time in the world this year, beating Reuben McCoy of the United States.

“I am very happy. I ran my best race over the past two years,” Van Zyl said. “I found my rhythm and I feel great ahead of the Beijing Games.”

Yeimar Lopez Garcia of Cuba won the men’s 800 in 1:44.07.

“(I am) satisfied with this victory, but not with the way I ran,” Garcia said.

Barbora Spotakova of the Czech Republic threw the javelin 209 feet, 0 inches to edge world record holder Osleidys Menendez of Cuba by less than 3 inches.

“I didn’t start well, but I found my rhythm in the end,” Spotakova said. “I want to throw a personal best in Beijing.”

In the triple jump, reigning world champion Nelson Evora of Portugal won with a leap of 56-6 1/2, beating the 55-8 1/4 posted by Marian Oprea of Romania.

“I checked my rhythm and my technique, because it was my first competition of the outdoors season,” Evora said. “The crowd helped me a lot.”

In the 3000-meter steeplechase, world record holder Saif Saaeed Shaheen dropped out near the halfway mark. Olympic champion Ezekiel Kemboi won in 8:09.26, the third best time in the world this year.

Source — Fox Sports