In a notable ruling last month, a California district court ruled that the HTML underlying a custom search results page of an online advertising creation platform is copyrightable.
In Media.net Advertising FZ-LLC v. Netseer Inc., No. 14-3883, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 3784 (N.D. Cal. Jan. 12, 2016), the plaintiff,
The big data revolution is quietly chugging along: devices, sensors, websites and networks are collecting and producing significant amounts of data, the cost of data storage continues to plummet, public and private sector interest in data mining is growing, data computational and statistical methods have advanced, and more and more
Digital media marketers are aggressively increasing the use of so-called sponsored content, or native advertising to reach new customers. Particularly with the growing use of ad blockers on web and mobile browsers, marketers have sought to present advertising in a new form that can circumvent automated blocking and somehow capture
As we have previously noted, there are several ongoing privacy-related lawsuits alleging that facial recognition-based systems of photo tagging violate the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA). The photo storage service Shutterfly and the social network Facebook are both defending putative class action suits that, among other things, allege
As we have previously noted, Facebook has been named as a defendant in a number of lawsuits claiming that its facial recognition-based system of photo tagging violates the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA). In a separate putative class action filed in Illinois federal court that involves the tagging
In an important ruling for digital currency service providers, EU’s top court, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), ruled that transactions to exchange a traditional currency for bitcoin virtual currency, or vice versa, were not subject to value added tax (VAT), effectively treating such transactions like an
A New York district court opinion is the latest addition to our watch of ongoing VPPA-related disputes, a notable decision on the issue of what exactly is a disclosure of “personally identifiable information” (PII) under the VPPA. Does PII refer to information which must, without more, link an actual
As discussed in a previous post on facial recognition technology, a putative class action has been filed against Facebook over the collection of “faceprints” for its online photo tagging function, Tag Suggestions. (See e.g., Licata v. Facebook, Inc., No. 2015CH05427 (Ill. Cir. Ct. Cook Cty. filed Apr. 1,
The Eleventh Circuit issued a notable ruling this week limiting a mobile app’s liability under the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), 18 U.S.C. § 2710, a law enacted in 1988 to preserve “consumer” personal privacy with respect to the rental or purchase of movies on VHS videotape, and which has
Courts continue to struggle with the application of CDA immunity to shield service provider defendants from liability in extreme cases. In this case, the Washington Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision, affirmed the lower court’s decision to allow a suit to proceed against classified service Backpage.com surrounding the sexual assault