Pro-Zango Amicus Brief in Zango v. Kaspersky

By Eric Goldman

The National Business Coalition on E-Commerce and Privacy has filed an amicus brief supporting Zango in Zango v. Kaspersky, the lawsuit over an anti-spyware vendor’s classification of third party software as “spyware.” I’m not familiar with this coalition and I couldn’t find a website for it. If you have any information about them, please let me know. The brief itself conducts a very run-of-the-mill statutory and legislative history analysis, so it doesn’t give much color about the coalition or why it cares about this case.

UPDATE: “Among its members are Experian, Fidelity Investments, the Investment Company Institute, Charles Schwab & Co., Inc., Deere & Company, Inc., JP Morgan Chase, General Motors Corp., Vanguard Group, UPS, CheckFree, Eastman Kodak, Bank of America, and The Assurant.” This makes me even more curious why these companies would be interested in the issue.

UPDATE: Wendy Davis at MediaPost reports: “The coalition’s members operate Web sites that place cookies on users’ computers when they visit the site. The group is concerned that the trial judge’s decision would immunize spyware removal companies that market software that deletes their members’ cookies.” Hmm…are they planning to sue CookiePal or any web browser software vendor that sets a default to reject all cookies?

The case library:

* Zango’s appeal brief [warning: 2.1MB file]

* The district court’s dismissal and my commentary

* TRO Denial and my commentary

* Kaspersky’s Response to TRO Motion

* Zango’s TRO motion