Mealey's Cyber Tech & E-Commerce : Mealey's : Legal News & Analysis

Mealey's Cyber Tech & E-Commerce

May 01, 2024
Individual Settlement Reached In Papa John’s Website Data Collection Class Suit

SAN DIEGO — A consumer who filed a putative class complaint accusing Papa John’s International Inc. of violating the California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA) through the interception and collection of users’ data on a pizza-ordering webpage filed a notice in a federal court in California stating that he reached an individual settlement.
May 01, 2024
Website Owner Asks High Court About Scope Of Contributory Copyright Infringement

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The owner and operator of the Kiwi Farms website, who was found liable for contributory infringement over site users’ posting of copyrighted materials, tells the U.S. Supreme Court in a petition for certiorari that the 10th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals’ ruling improperly expanded secondary liability by holding that receiving a takedown notice sufficiently establishes knowledge of infringement meriting action by a site operator.
April 30, 2024
FTC Seeks Evidence Of Amazon’s Use Of Self-Destructing Messages In Antitrust Suit

SEATTLE — Asserting that Amazon.com Inc. executives, including Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos, have been discussing “sensitive business matters,” including the present monopolization lawsuit against it, via an encrypted-messaging app that “irrevocably destroys messages,” the Federal Trade Commission filed a motion in Washington federal court seeking to compel the online retailer to produce any corporate documents related to “preservation notices and its instructions about the use of ephemeral messaging applications.”
April 30, 2024
Roblox Moves To Dismiss Or Arbitrate ‘Child Labor’ Claims In Class Action Suit

SAN FRANCISCO — The online gaming company Roblox Corp. filed motions in a California federal court to dismiss and compel arbitration of claims brought against it by parents of Roblox players who accuse it of violating California’s unfair competition law (UCL) by designing its game to addict kids and allegedly profiting off of a “child labor market” wherein minor users perform online tasks in return for Robux.
April 29, 2024
Chipmaker Urges 9th Circuit To Affirm Dismissal Of Consumers’ UCL Claims

SAN FRANCISCO — A modem chipmaker on April 26 filed an appellee brief in the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals urging the court to find that consumers’ putative class claims against it for violating antitrust laws and California’s unfair competition law (UCL) were properly dismissed.
April 29, 2024
Google Search Antitrust Judge Unseals Some Court Records For New York Times

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The New York Times Co. was partly successful in its ongoing effort to obtain unsealed versions of court documents in the government’s antitrust lawsuit against Google Inc., when a District of Columbia federal judge issued a document-by-document ruling directing the parties and two nonparties to provide unredacted versions of certain documents related to Google’s agreements that purportedly contributed to its dominance in the internet search engine market.
April 26, 2024
Panel Affirms Dismissal Of Fortnite Purchasers’ UCL, Antitrust Claims Against Apple

SAN JOSE, Calif. —A California appellate panel on April 25 affirmed a trial court’s dismissal of two consumers’ claims against Apple Inc. for removing the game “Fortnite” from its App Store and allegedly monopolizing the app market and artificially increasing prices on apps for users of its devices in violation of California’s unfair competition law (UCL) and the state’s antitrust law.
April 25, 2024
9th Circuit Issues Mandate In 3 Social Media Terror-Aiding Suits

SAN FRANCISCO — Three weeks after it affirmed the dismissal of three lawsuits in which terror victims’ family members alleged violation of the Antiterrorism Act (ATA) by social media platform operators, the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on April 24 issued a mandate announcing that the judgment has taken effect.
April 24, 2024
Parties In WhatsApp Spyware Suit Argue Whether Letter Rogatory Is Appropriate

OAKLAND, Calif. — WhatsApp Inc., NSO Group Technologies Limited and a nonparty research lab filed briefs in California federal court disputing whether discovery NSO seeks to obtain from the lab via a letter rogatory is relevant, appropriate or necessary to the computer fraud claims at the heart of the lawsuit over the defendant’s spyware.
April 24, 2024
Copyright, Trademark, Trade Dress Case Against TikTok Will Largely Proceed

SAN FRANCISCO — Although a motion to dismiss by TikTok Inc. was partly granted April 23, the copyright, trademark and trade dress claims by a China-based company can be repleaded in a fourth amended complaint (FAC), a federal judge in California ruled April 23.
April 22, 2024
Federal Judge Stays Class Action Alleging Insurer Illegally Wiretaps Website Users

PHILADELPHIA — A Pennsylvania federal judge granted an insurer’s motion to stay a putative class action alleging that it illegally wiretaps website users by using third-party session replay software to track and record their navigation, exercising “its considerable discretion to stay these proceedings pending guidance from the Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals regarding standing” in what the insurer calls a “strikingly similar” lawsuit.
April 19, 2024
Bank Of America Beats Trademark Claims By Search Engine Operator

DENVER — Almost three years after reinstating a trademark infringement action against Bank of America Corp. (BofA), the 10th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on April 18 affirmed a Colorado federal judge’s decision on remand to again reject the allegations.
April 18, 2024
Judge Won’t Rethink Dismissal Ruling In GitHub AI Copyright Suit

OAKLAND, Calif. — Five Doe defendants who claim that they did not receive proper attribution for use of their licensed materials on GitHub Inc.’s online collaboration platform failed in their quest for reconsideration of dismissal of their claims under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) when a California federal judge ruled that they did not “show reasonable diligence in bringing the motion” and did not establish any of the prerequisites for justifying reconsideration.
April 17, 2024
Apple, Plaintiffs, App Makers Differ On Discovery Issues In IPhone Antitrust Suit

SAN FRANCISCO — In a trio of discovery letter briefs filed in California federal court, Apple Inc., a class of consumers and a nonparty app developer bicker over the relevance of the plaintiffs’ discovery requests related to notification of the recently certified class and the merits of the class monopolization claims against Apple.
April 16, 2024
Epic Games Proposes Injunction To Stop Google’s Monopolistic Practices

SAN FRANCISCO — Four months after a California federal jury found that Google Inc. engaged in anticompetitive conduct, tying and restraint of trade related to distribution of and payment for Android apps, plaintiff Epic Games Inc. filed a proposed permanent injunction in which it suggests that Google be prevented from engaging in various agreements, incentives and downloading and installation practices, among other things, for the purpose of making the relevant app markets competitive.
April 16, 2024
Massachusetts High Court Considers When A Party Is On Notice Of Online Misuse

BOSTON — Requiring a group of models to police even the most obscure portions of the internet for potential misappropriation of their images is “a little bit of a needle in a haystack problem,” the justices of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court said during oral arguments, as they wrestled over a question of whether social media posts are “inherently unknowable” in the context of triggering the statute of limitations of the discovery rule for defamation and publicity rights claims.
April 15, 2024
Corrected Judgment Entered After $525M Awarded In Patent Case

CHICAGO — A federal judge in Illinois on April 12 entered a corrected judgment two days after jurors awarded a plaintiff $525 million in damages for infringement by Amazon Web Services Inc. of three information storage and retrieval patents.
April 10, 2024
Siding With Google, Board Says Ad Insertion Method, System Patent Is Obvious

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — In an April 9 final written decision (FWD), the Patent Trial and Appeal Board declared 13 claims of a patented method and system for inserting advertisements into broadcast content across platforms and devices obvious to a person of skill in the art (POSITA).
April 10, 2024
Popular Instagram User Wins Leave To Amend Copyright Claims Against Travel Company

WASHINGTON, D.C. — An Icelandic woman with more than 1 million Instagram followers defeated a travel marketing company’s motion to dismiss copyright infringement claims on April 9, with a District of Columbia federal judge instead granting the plaintiff leave to file a third amended complaint.
April 10, 2024
Tribes Sue Social Media Platforms Over Teen Mental Health Crisis

LOS ANGELES — In parallel complaints filed April 9 in the California Superior Court, two Native American tribes bring claims against the operators of Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube for creating a mental health crisis among their adolescents by designing their social media platforms in such a way that they are addictive, especially to younger users, which they claim leads to a plethora of emotional and psychological problems.
April 10, 2024
Software Developer Is Immune In Clean Air Act Dispute Arising From Defeat Devices

NEW YORK — The developers of a software tool that is used to reprogram car computer systems are entitled to immunity under the Communications Decency Act from a Clean Air Act (CAA) claim brought against them by the United States because the government failed to allege that they developed any software that could be used to defeat vehicle emissions controls, a New York federal judge found in partly granting the developers’ motion to dismiss.
April 09, 2024
After Adverse Federal Verdict, Instagram ‘Influencer’ Cop Files State Complaint

LOS ANGELES — The same day a California federal jury found that a Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officer did not experience adverse employment action in retaliation to her social media postings that were deemed “inappropriate” by the chief of police, the officer filed a similar gender discrimination complaint in California state court.
April 08, 2024
2nd Circuit Partially Revives Securities Claims Against Coinbase

NEW YORK — A Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel on April 5 partly revived a securities suit brought against a crypto asset exchange, finding that a federal judge in New York failed to assess which version of multiple user agreements was relied on to dismiss users’ claims against the company.
April 08, 2024
Insurer Moves To Reargue Dismissal Of Breach Of Contract Claims In Subrogation Suit

WILMINGTON, Del. — An insurer asked a Delaware court if it can reargue the court’s dismissal of its breach of contract claims for pleading deficiencies and file an amended complaint before dismissal with prejudice is entered on the breach of contract claims in its subrogation lawsuit seeking recovery from an application service provider for the amount paid to nonprofit insureds for investigative and remediation steps arising from a ransomware attack.
April 08, 2024
Verdict, Award In Favor Of Sprint On Trademark, ACPA Claims Upheld

ATLANTA — Efforts by sellers of counterfeit mobile phones to undo an award of $4.5 million in statutory damages in favor of Sprint Communications LLC have failed, with the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals deeming a jury verdict of cybersquatting, infringement and counterfeiting supported by ample evidence.