In an important opinion, the Ninth Circuit affirmed a lower court’s ruling that plaintiffs in the ongoing Facebook biometric privacy class action have alleged a concrete injury-in-fact to confer Article III standing and that the class was properly certified. (Patel v. Facebook, Inc., No. 18-15982 (9th Cir. Aug. 8, 2019)). Given the California district court’s … Continue Reading
As discussed in past posts about the long-running Facebook biometric privacy class action, users are challenging Facebook’s “Tag Suggestions” program, which scans for and identifies people in uploaded photographs for photo tagging. The class alleges that Facebook collected and stored their biometric data without prior notice or consent in violation of the Illinois Biometric Information … Continue Reading
UPDATE: On March 2, 2018, in a related biometric privacy litigation surrounding Tag Suggestions brought by non-users of Facebook, a California district court in a brief order declined to dismiss the action for lack of standing, citing its reasoning in the Patel opinion. (Gullen v. Facebook, Inc., No. 16-00937 (N.D. Cal. Mar. 2, 2018)). While … Continue Reading
This month, in one of the many recently-filed Illinois biometric privacy suits, a class action complaint alleging violations of Illinois’s Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) was lodged against Wow Bao, a restaurant chain, over its use of self-order kiosks that allow customers to use faceprints as a method to authenticate purchases. (Morris v. Wow Bao LLC, No. … Continue Reading
Update: On March 9, 2017, Google filed a motion requesting the court certify an interlocutory appeal. In particular, Google contends that the following question satisfies the statutory criteria: whether the term “biometric identifier,” as defined in Illinois Biometric Privacy Act, includes information derived from photographs. We’ve closely followed the numerous biometric privacy disputes and legislative … Continue Reading
Late last week, the Illinois state senate considered an amendment tacked onto to an unrelated bill that would have revised the Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act, a law that has been the subject of much debate and litigation in the past year. This amendment had the potential to drastically affect the current litany of lawsuits … Continue Reading
The District Court for the Northern District of California recently issued what could be a very significant decision on a number of important digital law issues. These include: the enforceability of “clickwrap” as compared to “web wrap” website terms of use, the enforceability of a choice-of-law provision in such terms of use, and a preliminary … Continue Reading
As we have previously written about, there are several ongoing biometric privacy-related lawsuits alleging that facial recognition-based systems of photo tagging violate the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA). Add one more to the list. A Chicago resident brought a putative class action against Google for allegedly collecting, storing and using, without consent and in … Continue Reading
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 that such services created and stored … Continue Reading
