This adage is constantly on my mind when I read SAD Scheme opinions. On the one hand, the plaintiffs routinely exhibit, at most, a gross disregard for due process and the rule of law. On the other hand, I often see a lot of flat-out bad lawyering.

But must it be either one or the other? ¿Por qué no los dos?

* * *

This SAD Scheme case was filed by the copyright owners of Steal a Brainrot, a game in Roblox. As usual, the plaintiffs sought an ex parte TRO. The plaintiffs supplemented the complaint with at least two filings:

• Exhibit 1 to the TRO motion: “a declaration filed by Yingchun Hou in support of the motion for a TRO (“Hou Exhibit”) that, as Hou attests on the public docket, demonstrates Plaintiffs’ inability to verify a current physical address associated with any of the fourteen Defendants.”
• Exhibit 2 to the complaint: “[s]creenshot evidence showing each Defendant on Schedule A selling infringing [c]ounterfeit [p]roducts.”

Putting aside the Exhibit [#]/Schedule [Letter] labeling conflict, notice what’s missing: the actual Schedule A. The court says succinctly: “without the “Schedule A” referenced in the complaint, the Court cannot confirm who, in fact, the defendants are whom Plaintiffs seek to restrain.”

In other word, it’s hard to win a Schedule A case without actually, you know, filing the titular Schedule A. The court denies the motion for an ex parte TRO for now.

It is easy enough for the plaintiffs to cure this defect by filing the Schedule A. Still, how should we classify this crucial omission per Hanlon’s razor? An attempt to bend/break the rules? Sloppy? Embarrassing? All of the above and worse?

[Personnel note: the complaint is still under seal, so I cannot see who filed it. However, the opinion references Shengmao Mu of Whitewood Law as Plaintiff’s counsel.]

In a footnote, the court adds:

At least one court has ruled in a similar context that the practice of “incorporat[ing] the names of . . . [d]efendants by reference . . . ‘does not satisfy Rule 10(a) or achieve its intended purpose.’” Rule 10(a) “is not a mere procedural nicety,” but rather “protects the public’s legitimate interest in knowing which disputes involving which parties are before the federal courts.”

Amen. I wish more judges would adopt this view!

* * *

On the assumption that the fatal omission will be cured, as a courtesy, the court provides some freebie tips about other potential problems with this case:

Personal Jurisdiction. The plaintiffs submitted a declaration from a consultant, Jay Harvey Paragoso, stating in conclusory fashion that “[a]ll the injuries and damages described above are taking place in the United States, including in New York.” This does not impress the court:

Plaintiffs have made no allegations, submitted no evidence, and advanced no arguments that the original event which caused their injury was in New York. And even if the allegation from the Paragoso Declaration were enough to show that each Defendant caused an injury in New York, it does not establish that any Defendant “regularly does or solicits business . . . in the state” or “expects or should reasonably expect the act to have consequences in the state and derives substantial revenue from . . . international commerce.”

To establish jurisdiction, the plaintiffs also tried:

the barebones allegation that, “[a]ccording to Plaintiff[s’] test purchases, Defendants’ internet-based stores offer for sale and accept orders of Counterfeit Products from and offer to ship such Counterfeit Products to New York addresses.” The declaration from Plaintiffs’ counsel Shengmao Mu (“Mu Declaration”) qualifies that the statement in the complaint is made only “upon information and belief” and adds, “I do not state that counsel or counsel’s staff completed purchases from every Defendant because the declarations and Complaint on which I rely do not establish that fact.” The Paragoso Declaration merely attests that “numerous fully interactive e-commerce stores, including those operating [Defendants’] [s]eller [a]liases, . . . were offering for sale and/or selling infringing products embodying [Plaintiffs’ copyrighted works] to consumers in this Judicial District and throughout the United States.” The Paragoso Declaration refrains from making the assertion that any of the Defendants, much less all of them, actually sold any infringing products to consumers in the State of New York—or even entered into any transaction at all with such consumers.

So did the plaintiffs make test buys or not? If the complaint alleges test buys but the supporting declaration does not, that discrepancy like another Hanlon’s razor and a possible basis for sanctions. I doubt we’ll see such sanctions, though. Courts routinely tolerate mistakes like this from SAD Scheme counsel. But they should not, especially in ex parte proceedings, where the defendants are not around to defend themselves and any factual errors by the lawyer pose a greater risk of causing pernicious judicial errors.

Irreparable Harm. The plaintiffs tried at least three justifications for an ex parte TRO:

• it’s needed to prevent the “loss of control of reputation, loss of trade, and loss of goodwill.” The court says: where’s the supporting evidence?
• the defendants may abscond the funds. “Plaintiffs must make a showing that the harm that they will suffer before judgment is issued cannot be repaired through a money judgment.”
• it’s needed to “preserve their right to an equitable accounting of Defendants’ profits,” but the court responds “Plaintiffs must still demonstrate that their ability to obtain that accounting would be irreparably harmed without a prejudgment asset freeze.” (In a footnote, the court wonders if copyright damages are an equitable remedy).

The court’s bottom-line: “This is all to say, “a temporary restraining order is an extraordinary remedy that will not be granted lightly.”” Yet, sadly, after thousands of SAD Scheme cases, ex parte TROs have turned into routine, everyday events.

Case Citation: Speedy Simulator Gaming, LLC v. Schedule A Defendants, 1:26-cv-08931-LJL (S.D.N.Y. Oct. 26, 2026)

Prior Blog Posts on the SAD Scheme

• Spam-Filtered Email Service Unwinds a $13M Default Judgment–Imagination Products v. Omont
• Judge Barker (E.D. Tex.) Disassembles Two SAD Scheme Cases
• Court Wipes Out SAD Scheme Default Judgment Due to Improper Email Service–Deckers v. Litfun
• SAD Scheme Plaintiff Must Pay $40k to Defendant–Guangzhou Tinpod v. Schedule A Defendants
• New York Judge Shuts Down a SAD Scheme TRO Request–CJB Global v. Schedule A Defendants
• Every SAD Scheme Opinion Is Weird In Its Own Way–Cai v. Chaozhoushi Yitong Dianzi Shangwu Youxiangongsi
• Federal Circuit Rebuffs SAD Scheme Plaintiff–Shenzhen Jisu v. Annex A Defendants
• Court Rebuffs Emojico’s SAD Scheme TRO Request
• Seventh Circuit Limits Email Service to Chinese SAD Scheme Defendants–Kangol v. Hangzhou Silk
• SAD Scheme Defendant Gets Damages Payout from the Bond–Bright Head v. Schedule A Defendants
• Judge Shopping & Schedule A (Guest Blog Post)
• SAD Scheme Plaintiff Gets Default Win But Blows the Layup on Damages–Shenzen Huajie v. Shenzen Leyibei
• SAD Scheme Copyright Plaintiff Must Compensate Defendants–Shenzhen Langmi v. Schedule A Defendants
• A “But They’re ‘Counterfeiters’!” Argument Doesn’t Clinch a SAD Scheme TRO–Emojico v. Schedule A Defendants
• New Article Alert: “SAD Scheme Standing Orders”
• Greer Burns Law Firm Sanctioned for “Willfully Abusive” and “Egregious” SAD Scheme Judge-Shopping
• Schedule A: Ten Notable Developments in 2025 (Guest Blog Post)
• Second Circuit Rejects Email Service on Chinese Defendants in Baby Shark SAD Scheme Case
• 11th Circuit Sidesteps the SAD Scheme’s Problems–Ain Jeem v. Schedule A
• Another Shill Article Tries to Normalize the SAD Scheme
• Court Sanctions Plaintiff’s Lawyer for Unverified Claims That the Defendant Was Hiding–Guangzhou Youlan Technology Co. Ltd. v. Onbrill World
• SAD Scheme Cases Are a Cesspool of IP Owner Overreaches–Nike v. Quanzhou Yiyi Shoe Industry
• District of New Jersey Adopts SAD Scheme Standing Order
• Court “Sanctions” SAD Scheme Judge Shopping—Crimpit v. Schedule A Defendants
• Chicago-Kent SAD Scheme Symposium TOMORROW
• Amicus Brief Urges Seventh Circuit to Award Attorneys’ Fees in SAD Scheme Case–Louis Poulsen v. Lightzey
• Court Rejects Schedule A Claims Against Sellers of Compatible Parts/Accessories (Cross-Post)
• Judge Kness: the SAD Scheme “Should No Longer Be Perpetuated in Its Present Form”–Eicher Motors v. Schedule A Defendants
• SAD Scheme Lawyers Sanctioned for Judge-Shopping–Dongguan Deego v. Schedule A
• Judge Ranjan Cracks Down on SAD Scheme Cases
• Because the SAD Scheme Disregards Due Process, Errors Inevitably Ensue–Modlily v. Funlingo
• SAD Scheme-Style Case Falls Apart When the Defendant Appears in Court—King Spider v. Pandabuy
• Serial Copyright Plaintiff Lacks Standing to Enforce Third-Party Copyrights–Viral DRM v 7News
• Another N.D. Ill. Judge Balks at SAD Scheme Joinder–Zaful v. Schedule A Defendants
• Judge Rejects SAD Scheme Joinder–Toyota v. Schedule A Defendants
• Another Judge Balks at SAD Scheme Joinder–Xie v. Annex A
• Will Judges Become More Skeptical of Joinder in SAD Scheme Cases?–Dongguan Juyuan v. Schedule A
• SAD Scheme Leads to Another Massively Disproportionate Asset Freeze–Powell v. Schedule A
• Misjoinder Dooms SAD Scheme Patent Case–Wang v. Schedule A Defendants
• Judge Hammers SEC for Lying to Get an Ex Parte TRO–SEC v. Digital Licensing
• Judge Reconsiders SAD Scheme Ruling Against Online Marketplaces–Squishmallows v. Alibaba
• N.D. Cal. Judge Pushes Back on Copyright SAD Scheme Cases–Viral DRM v. YouTube Schedule A Defendants
• A Judge Enumerates a SAD Scheme Plaintiff’s Multiple Abuses, But Still Won’t Award Sanctions–Jiangsu Huari Webbing Leather v. Schedule A Defendants
• Why Online Marketplaces Don’t Do More to Combat the SAD Scheme–Squishmallows v. Alibaba
• SAD Scheme Cases Are Always Troubling–Betty’s Best v. Schedule A Defendants 
• Judge Pushes Back on SAD Scheme Sealing Requests
• Roblox Sanctioned for SAD Scheme Abuse–Roblox v. Schedule A Defendants
• Now Available: the Published Version of My SAD Scheme Article
• In a SAD Scheme Case, Court Rejects Injunction Over “Emoji” Trademark
• Schedule A (SAD Scheme) Plaintiff Sanctioned for “Fraud on the Court”–Xped v. Respect the Look
• My Comments to the USPTO About the SAD Scheme and Anticounterfeiting/Antipiracy Efforts
• My New Article on Abusive “Schedule A” IP Lawsuits Will Likely Leave You Angry
• If the Word “Emoji” is a Protectable Trademark, What Happens Next?–Emoji GmbH v. Schedule A Defendants
• My Declaration Identifying Emoji Co. GmbH as a Possible Trademark Troll

The post It’s Hard to Win a Schedule A Case Without Filing the “Schedule A”–Speedy Simulator v. Schedule A Defendants appeared first on Technology & Marketing Law Blog.

This is not a SAD Scheme case, but it is adjacent. The plaintiff sued the Chinese defendant but did not seek an ex parte TRO. It requested, and received, permission to serve the defendant by email. When the defendant no-showed, the court granted a default judgment to the plaintiff and awarded $13M+ damages against Omont.

If this had been a SAD Scheme case with a typical ex parte TRO, Omont would have learned of the proceedings, regardless of any attempted service, from the resulting marketplace freeze. Since that didn’t happen, Omont claims it first learned of the lawsuit when the marketplace delisted some of its items in response to the default judgment. The defendant went back into its email account, found the attempted email service in its spam folder, and then quickly ran to court to challenge the default judgment.

The court permits the challenge to the default judgment because:

defendant did not have notice of the suit. It is unsurprising that an email from an unknown foreign attorney would end up in defendant’s spam folder. Because, as defendant points out, there was no injunction in this case, there was no way for defendant—other than meticulously monitoring its spam folder—to learn about this litigation before the default judgment was entered against it. The court finds that the lack of notice afforded to defendant in these circumstances qualifies as “inadvertence, surprise, or excusable neglect.”

(Raise your hand if you “meticulously monitor” your spam folder LOL. Then again, you should. All of the email notices I get about class action settlements affecting me always mysteriously seem to end up in my spam folder, so I do actually get a few pennies for sorting through the spam).

The court adds that Kangol also “clarified a couple of months after the default judgment was entered here [that] the Hague Service Convention prohibits service by email in China.” This is true but incomplete. Kangol held: “if the Hague Service Convention applies, then service was improper because the Convention prohibits service by email in China. But the district court must first determine whether the Convention applies at all,” and remanded the case to determine the applicability of the Hague Convention. This court doesn’t address that threshold issue explicitly in this opinion.

Because of the new information,

The default judgment order awards plaintiff $13,335,764.46 in damages from defendant. The court cannot sustain such a significant award on a default judgment entered against a defendant who was not properly served.

This is also not precise. The court cannot sustain *any* damages award–even $1–against a defendant who was not properly served. The problem isn’t the size of the damages award; it’s the lack of due process.

There’s another problem with this case: now that the defendant is available to point out the case’s flaws, the trade dress claim may fall apart. The court says “defendant has shown that it has a meritorious defense” because “Defendant challenges that plaintiff’s alleged trade dress is inherently distinctive or has acquired secondary meaning.” This makes sense, because a supplemental trademark registration does not establish the mark’s validity. So it’s possible, or perhaps probable, that the court will find that the plaintiff has no rights to the color orange–and never did.

AND YET…the doctrinal limitations of the supplemental registration were available to the court before issuing a $13M final judgment, yet the judge greenlighted the default judgment nonetheless. The plaintiff would have gotten away with it but for the post-default adversarial advocacy.

It would be more fun watching default judgments fall apart if the stakes weren’t so serious. These situations may indicate that the court reached the wrong final conclusion. Each time that happens, it’s a reminder that courts routinely chunk their independent evaluation of unopposed advocacy; and worse, judges routinely don’t sanction or punish plaintiffs in those circumstances. This system of lopsided advocacy is irreparably broken, which reinforces why we need more due process in our adversary-based adjudication system, not less.

[Note 1: the court didn’t appear to take any steps to address the continued legitimacy of the trade dress claims against the other defaulted defendants, even though a busted trade dress would render the other default judgments also illegitimate. There are over $7M of other default judgments at stake, so this is not a small detail.].

[Note 2: Similarly, if email service against Omont was impermissible, does that mean or suggest that email service against the other defendants had the same defect? If so, that would be another reason to unwind the default judgments against them, but the court didn’t appear to ask that question either].

The “the email went to my spam folder” defense sounds a little like the venerable but typically mockable “dog ate my homework” defense (which doesn’t really even work in the digital era). Yet, the spam filter story has been told over and over about email service, and each failed service has extraordinary consequences for due process and the rule of law. The inevitability of spam filtered service emails–combined with the $13M mistake the court made predicated on email service–is a very good reason why email service should be extraordinarily rare, not a ready fallback when service is difficult via more traditional means.

Case Citation: Imagination Products Corp. v. ComingHere Direct, 2026 WL 3093999 (N.D. Ill. Oct. 16, 2026)

Prior Blog Posts on the SAD Scheme

• Judge Barker (E.D. Tex.) Disassembles Two SAD Scheme Cases
• Court Wipes Out SAD Scheme Default Judgment Due to Improper Email Service–Deckers v. Litfun
• SAD Scheme Plaintiff Must Pay $40k to Defendant–Guangzhou Tinpod v. Schedule A Defendants
• New York Judge Shuts Down a SAD Scheme TRO Request–CJB Global v. Schedule A Defendants
• Every SAD Scheme Opinion Is Weird In Its Own Way–Cai v. Chaozhoushi Yitong Dianzi Shangwu Youxiangongsi
• Federal Circuit Rebuffs SAD Scheme Plaintiff–Shenzhen Jisu v. Annex A Defendants
• Court Rebuffs Emojico’s SAD Scheme TRO Request
• Seventh Circuit Limits Email Service to Chinese SAD Scheme Defendants–Kangol v. Hangzhou Silk
• SAD Scheme Defendant Gets Damages Payout from the Bond–Bright Head v. Schedule A Defendants
• Judge Shopping & Schedule A (Guest Blog Post)
• SAD Scheme Plaintiff Gets Default Win But Blows the Layup on Damages–Shenzen Huajie v. Shenzen Leyibei
• SAD Scheme Copyright Plaintiff Must Compensate Defendants–Shenzhen Langmi v. Schedule A Defendants
• A “But They’re ‘Counterfeiters’!” Argument Doesn’t Clinch a SAD Scheme TRO–Emojico v. Schedule A Defendants
• New Article Alert: “SAD Scheme Standing Orders”
• Greer Burns Law Firm Sanctioned for “Willfully Abusive” and “Egregious” SAD Scheme Judge-Shopping
• Schedule A: Ten Notable Developments in 2025 (Guest Blog Post)
• Second Circuit Rejects Email Service on Chinese Defendants in Baby Shark SAD Scheme Case
• 11th Circuit Sidesteps the SAD Scheme’s Problems–Ain Jeem v. Schedule A
• Another Shill Article Tries to Normalize the SAD Scheme
• Court Sanctions Plaintiff’s Lawyer for Unverified Claims That the Defendant Was Hiding–Guangzhou Youlan Technology Co. Ltd. v. Onbrill World
• SAD Scheme Cases Are a Cesspool of IP Owner Overreaches–Nike v. Quanzhou Yiyi Shoe Industry
• District of New Jersey Adopts SAD Scheme Standing Order
• Court “Sanctions” SAD Scheme Judge Shopping—Crimpit v. Schedule A Defendants
• Chicago-Kent SAD Scheme Symposium TOMORROW
• Amicus Brief Urges Seventh Circuit to Award Attorneys’ Fees in SAD Scheme Case–Louis Poulsen v. Lightzey
• Court Rejects Schedule A Claims Against Sellers of Compatible Parts/Accessories (Cross-Post)
• Judge Kness: the SAD Scheme “Should No Longer Be Perpetuated in Its Present Form”–Eicher Motors v. Schedule A Defendants
• SAD Scheme Lawyers Sanctioned for Judge-Shopping–Dongguan Deego v. Schedule A
• Judge Ranjan Cracks Down on SAD Scheme Cases
• Because the SAD Scheme Disregards Due Process, Errors Inevitably Ensue–Modlily v. Funlingo
• SAD Scheme-Style Case Falls Apart When the Defendant Appears in Court—King Spider v. Pandabuy
• Serial Copyright Plaintiff Lacks Standing to Enforce Third-Party Copyrights–Viral DRM v 7News
• Another N.D. Ill. Judge Balks at SAD Scheme Joinder–Zaful v. Schedule A Defendants
• Judge Rejects SAD Scheme Joinder–Toyota v. Schedule A Defendants
• Another Judge Balks at SAD Scheme Joinder–Xie v. Annex A
• Will Judges Become More Skeptical of Joinder in SAD Scheme Cases?–Dongguan Juyuan v. Schedule A
• SAD Scheme Leads to Another Massively Disproportionate Asset Freeze–Powell v. Schedule A
• Misjoinder Dooms SAD Scheme Patent Case–Wang v. Schedule A Defendants
• Judge Hammers SEC for Lying to Get an Ex Parte TRO–SEC v. Digital Licensing
• Judge Reconsiders SAD Scheme Ruling Against Online Marketplaces–Squishmallows v. Alibaba
• N.D. Cal. Judge Pushes Back on Copyright SAD Scheme Cases–Viral DRM v. YouTube Schedule A Defendants
• A Judge Enumerates a SAD Scheme Plaintiff’s Multiple Abuses, But Still Won’t Award Sanctions–Jiangsu Huari Webbing Leather v. Schedule A Defendants
• Why Online Marketplaces Don’t Do More to Combat the SAD Scheme–Squishmallows v. Alibaba
• SAD Scheme Cases Are Always Troubling–Betty’s Best v. Schedule A Defendants 
• Judge Pushes Back on SAD Scheme Sealing Requests
• Roblox Sanctioned for SAD Scheme Abuse–Roblox v. Schedule A Defendants
• Now Available: the Published Version of My SAD Scheme Article
• In a SAD Scheme Case, Court Rejects Injunction Over “Emoji” Trademark
• Schedule A (SAD Scheme) Plaintiff Sanctioned for “Fraud on the Court”–Xped v. Respect the Look
• My Comments to the USPTO About the SAD Scheme and Anticounterfeiting/Antipiracy Efforts
• My New Article on Abusive “Schedule A” IP Lawsuits Will Likely Leave You Angry
• If the Word “Emoji” is a Protectable Trademark, What Happens Next?–Emoji GmbH v. Schedule A Defendants
• My Declaration Identifying Emoji Co. GmbH as a Possible Trademark Troll

The post Spam-Filtered Email Service Unwinds a $13M Default Judgment–Imagination Products v. Omont appeared first on Technology & Marketing Law Blog.

The City of Poway used the Meta Moderation Assist for its page. It flagged Jalisi’s posts as bot postings because “Plaintiff does not have a profile picture, has only one Facebook friend, and has no posts on his own profile.”

The court says the deployment of Meta Moderation Assist isn’t inherently unconstitutional:

• “the restriction is facially content neutral….[Profiles] are flagged based on the presence of certain predictive factors, such as the absence of a profile picture or the absence of other Facebook friends. Thus, determining whether a comment may be hidden has nothing to do with the content of the comment.” [That’s true, though the tool does account for the content on the profile page.]
• “The City uses Meta Moderation Assist because it “does not have the resources nor ability to actively monitor each and every comment made in real time in order to manually hide bot comments.” There is nothing in the record to suggest that the City turned to Meta Moderation Assist “motivated by disagreement with any particular expressive” conduct. Indeed, Plaintiff’s evidence that identical comments published by other users remained visible actually strengthens the finding that the restriction is content neutral; critical speech is clearly tolerated by the City.”
• “the two-way exchange of information between the citizenry and the City is a substantial governmental interest….the interest runs counter to the suppression of free expression; it seeks to ensure that residents have effective access to the exchange of ideas with their neighbors and their government….. The interest is related to the suppression of expression by non-human bots, but bots are neither “human beings with First Amendment rights” nor the “[corporations] … composed of [them … that] possess First Amendment rights themselves.” [cite to Barrett’s Moody concurrence].”

The court concludes:

on the early record before it, the Court finds that the City has no alternative methods to prevent nonhuman bot accounts from flooding their Facebook page. This is not a situation where there is an obvious, alternative method of regulation that would achieve the governmental interest and incidentally censor no speech….

even assuming the Meta Moderation Assist program can be considered a government restriction on speech, the restriction is content-neutral and on this record survives intermediate scrutiny.

For this reason, the court mostly rejects Jalisi’s TRO request.

Nevertheless, now that Poway knows that Facebook made a false positive when it screened Jalisi’s posts as bot content, the court says Poway must reverse its blocks of his content:

1. Within 24 hours of receiving notice of this Order, restore the public visibility of every comment by Plaintiff that has been hidden on the City’s official Facebook page; and

2. Refrain from hiding, deleting, or otherwise suppressing Plaintiff’s comments on the City’s official Facebook page on the basis of their viewpoint.

This opinion indirectly addresses one of the main questions left open by the Lindke case: if a government entity has a social media account and the social media service exercises its own independent content moderation, how will courts evaluate the constitutionality of the social media’s moderation overlaid on top of any social media policies adopted by the government entity? This court doesn’t directly adddress that issue, but its implicit answer in this case is that anti-bot efforts are likely to survive constitutional scrutiny, though perhaps only if the city corrects known false positives.

Also, now that the simplicity of Facebook’s anti-bot criteria are clearer, Jalisi and other critics can end-run them quite simply.

Case Citation: Jalisi v. City of Poway, 2026 WL 3169675 (S.D. Cal. Oct. 22, 2026)

Related posts:

• Court Greenlights Politician’s Censorship of Social Media Comments–Fox v. Faison
• University of Wisconsin-Madison Censored Animal-Rights Activist on Instagram and Facebook–Krasno v. UWM
• School Board Official Censored Constituent by Blocking Access to Their Social Media Account–Garnier v. O’Connor-Ratcliff
• Government Agencies Can’t Use Dumb Word Filters to Screen Social Media Comments–PETA v. Tabak
• Supreme Court Addresses When Government Employees’ Social Media Accounts are State Action (Lindke & Garnier)
• Politician-Operated Social Media Accounts Raise Many Thorny Legal Issues
• University-Operated Twitter Account is a Limited Public Forum–Gilley v. Stabin
• Constituent Blocking on Twitter Is Censorship–Felts v. Vollmer
• Catching Up on Government Officials’ Censorship of Constituents on Social Media
• Ninth Circuit: Elected Officials Violated the First Amendment by Blocking Constituents on Social Media–Garnier v. O’Connor-Ratcliff
• Sixth Circuit: Government Official Can Freely Censor Constituents at his Public Facebook Page–Lindke v. Freed
• Constituents Can Sue Chicago Alderman for Blocking Their Facebook Comments–Czosnyka v. Gardiner
• Police Department Can Remove Citizen’s Facebook Comments Calling Cops “Pigs”–Sgaggio v. De Young
• City Government Can’t Remove Off-Topic Comments From Its Social Media Page–Kimsey v. Sammamish
• Does the First Amendment Permit Government Actors to Manage Social Media Comments?–Tanner v. Ziegenhorn
• Law Enforcement’s Efforts to Scrub COVID “Misinformation” Online Violated the First Amendment–Cohoon v. Konrath
• State Legislator Doesn’t Understand That He Works for the Government–Attwood v. Clemons
• Politician Can Block Constituents at Twitter–If It’s a “Campaign” Account–Campbell v. Reisch
• Another Politician Unconstitutionally Censored Constituents on Twitter–Campbell v. Reisch
• When Can a Politician Block Constituents on Social Media?–Garnier v. O’Connor-Ratcliff
• Comments on the Hikind v. Ocasio-Cortez Lawsuit Over AOC’s Twitter Blocks
• Pres. Trump Violates the Constitution By Blocking @RealDonaldTrump Followers–Knight First Amendment v. Trump
• Another Government Impermissibly Censors Constituents on Facebook–Robinson v. Hunt County
• Another Politician Probably Violated the First Amendment By Blocking a Constituent on Twitter–Campbell v. Reisch
• Blocking Constituents from Facebook Page Violates First Amendment–Davison v. Randall
• Kentucky Governor Can Block Constituents on Social Media–Morgan v. Bevin
• President Trump Violated the First Amendment by Blocking Users @realdonaldtrump
• Politician Can’t Ban Constituent From Her Official Facebook Page–Davison v. Loudoun County Supervisors
• Deleting Comments to County Facebook Page May Violate First Amendment–Davison v. Loudoun County
• County Attorney’s Deletion of Constituent’s Facebook Comment May Violate First Amendment
• First Amendment Precludes Disorderly Conduct Conviction for Ranting on Police Department Facebook Page

The post City Government Can Use Facebook’s Anti-Bot Tool–Jalisi v. Poway appeared first on Technology & Marketing Law Blog.

Generated by ChatGPT Dec. 2025

Alex Berenson is a one-time N.Y. Times reporter whose life appears to have taken an unfortunate turn in the wake of MAGA and COVID. According to his Wikipedia entry:

During the coronavirus pandemic, Berenson appeared frequently in American right-wing media, spreading false claims about COVID-19 and its vaccines. He spent much of the pandemic arguing that its seriousness was overblown. Once the COVID-19 vaccines became available, he spread misinformation about the safety and effectiveness of the vaccines.

(A reminder that 1.2M Americans died due to COVID).

Berenson aggregated over 200k followers at Twitter who were exposed to his hot takes on COVID and vaccines. That put his account at risk as Twitter cracked down on misinformation and denialism:

In May 2020, Twitter announced that it may append labels or warning messages to tweets related to COVID-19 misinformation. Berenson tweeted that he was “concern[ed] about what the new rules might mean for free speech on [Twitter].” In response, Twitter’s Vice President of Global Communications Brandon Borrman contacted Berenson to discuss the new policy. In December 2020, Twitter announced a new policy with respect to COVID-19 vaccine misinformation, stating that it would start to “remove Tweets which advance harmful or misleading narratives about COVID-19 vaccinations.” Berenson contacted Borrman, “looking for assurances that Twitter would continue to allow his reporting on COVID-19 vaccines.” Borrman allegedly responded that the “points [Berenson was] raising should not be an issue at all,” and that Berenson should reach out if he “r[an] into any issues.”

On March 1, 2021, Twitter announced a “five-strike policy” to combat COVID-19 misinformation. Accounts that received strikes were subject to increasing levels of discipline: the first strike resulted in a warning, the second and third strikes each in a 12-hour account lock, the fourth strike in a 7-day account lock, and the fifth or successive strike in permanent suspension. The policy provided that, if a user “believe[s] that [their] account was locked or suspended in error, [the user] can submit an appeal.”

The next day, Berenson spoke with Borrman, who allegedly reported that “[Berenson’s] name has never come up in the discussions around these policies,” and that Borrman would “try to ensure [that Berenson would be] given a heads up before an action is taken, but [that Borrman was] not always made aware of them before they’re executed.”…

Berenson received strikes from Twitter in March, July, and August 2021. His Twitter account was permanently suspended with the fifth strike on August 28, 2021.

Berenson “alleges that former President Joseph R. Biden, as well as other individuals in the Biden Administration, conspired with executives at Pfizer, Inc. to pressure Twitter to suspend Berenson’s Twitter account, because of his views with respect to the COVID-19 vaccines.” He sued various US government officials for roles in the alleged censorship. In 2025, the district court dismissed several of the defendants. The Second Circuit, in a memo opinion, affirms that ruling.

Section 1985(3)

Berenson asserts that the relevant class here is a “class of Americans who had chosen not to receive a COVID-19 vaccine, a class of which [ ] Berenson is apart [sic].” The district court correctly held that Berenson’s proposed class does not constitute a class for Section 1985(3) purposes. Instead, this is precisely the kind of class that the Supreme Court cautioned against in Bray—a class composed of individuals who share a desire to engage in conduct, i.e., to forgo COVID-19 vaccination, that the defendants allegedly disfavor. To the extent Berenson suggests that the class falls within the ambit of Section 1985 because it “includes a disproportionate number of African-Americans, political conservatives, and evangelical Christians,” we are unpersuaded….

the FAC is replete with allegations that Berenson, and not a general class of unvaccinated Americans, was specifically targeted….Berenson’s Section 1985 claim must be dismissed because he failed to plausibly allege “that the defendants acted with class-based, invidiously discriminatory animus.”

Tortious Interference

Twitter’s five-strike policy and Borrman’s alleged remarks, whether considered separately or together, are not “wholly incompatible” with the Terms of Service. The relevant provision of the Terms of Service is located in the section entitled “Ending These Terms,” and provides the means by which a user may terminate the agreement…the provision makes clear that suspension or termination of an account is not limited to violations of that policy….

[Borrman’s] remarks suggest at most that Borrman would attempt to notify Berenson of action taken against him—not that no action would be taken against Berenson or that Berenson would necessarily receive advance notice of any action.

In 2022, Berenson’s deplatforming claim against Twitter partly survived a motion to dismiss. My blog post on that ruling. That ruling became a bit of a cause celebre in MAGA circles as proof that (1) Berenson was censored, and (2) Twitter could be held liabile. The Second Circuit rejects that ruling:

Berenson relies heavily on Berenson v. Twitter, Inc., No. C 21-09818 (WHA), 2022 WL 1289049 (N.D. Cal. Apr. 29, 2022), a decision in a case Berenson initiated against Twitter in December 2021. There, the district court granted in part and denied in part Twitter’s motion to dismiss, holding that the five-strike policy and Borrman’s “specific and direct assurances to [Berenson] regarding his posts pursuant to that policy” “amount[ed] to a modification of the [Terms of Service]” and that Berenson had plausibly alleged that “Twitter’s conduct … modified its contract with [him] and then breached that contract by failing to abide by its own five-strike policy and its specific commitments set forth through [Borrman].” We find that analysis unpersuasive

It’s a reminder that plaintiffs have virtually no chance of successfully suing Internet services for their account termination/content removal decisions. Even one of the few preliminary “wins” by plaintiffs is “unpersuasive” when reviewed by an (unrelated) appellate court.

The litigation over Biden-era COVID-related “censorship” feels quaint in light of the ongoing, relentless, and far more egregious censorship taking place daily in the Trump 2.0 administration. If anyone still wants to make censorship their cause celebre, it would make sense to start with the censorship taking place RIGHT NOW.

Case Citation: Berenson v. Gottlieb, 2026 WL 3135334 (2d Cir. Oct. 20, 2026)

Selected Jawboning Posts

• The Federal Government Used Jawboning to Censor ICE Transparency Initiatives–Rosado v. Bondi
• COVID Jawboning Lawsuit Dismissed (For Now)–Dressen v. Flaherty
• Section 230 (Still) Applies to Contract Breach Claim–NJCCC v. McAleer
• Facebook Defeats Armslist’s Account Termination Lawsuit–Armslist v. Facebook
• Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Is Breaking Internet Law Faster Than I Can Blog It
• Plaintiffs Lack Standing to Sue Over Government Jawboning When Their Evidence is Based on Vibes–Murthy v. Missouri
• Jawboning Defendants Are 6-for-6 in the Ninth Circuit–Hart v. Facebook
• Another Jawboning Case Fails in the 9th Circuit (But a TAFS Judge Doesn’t Like the Biden Administration)–Rogalinksi v. Meta
• Sixth Circuit Dismisses Online Jawboning Case–Changizi v. DHHS
• “Twitter Files” Don’t Help Revive Jawboning Case–Hart v. Facebook
• Another Jawboning Case Fails in the Ninth Circuit–Kennedy v. Warren
• Government Submissions to a Trusted Flagger Program Aren’t Unconstitutional Jawboning–O’Handley v. Weber
• Ninth Circuit Easily Rejects Another Jawboning Case–Huber v. Biden
• Ninth Circuit Easily Rejects Jawboning Claims Against YouTube–Doe v. Google
• Facebook Defeats Jawboning Lawsuit Over COVID Misinformation Removal–Rogalinski v. Meta
• COVID Skeptics’ Anti-Jawboning Lawsuit Fails–Changizi v. Department of HHS
• Facebook & Twitter Defeat Lawsuit Over Account Terminations of COVID/Mask Skeptic–Hart v. Facebook
• Twitter Defeats Trump’s Deplatforming Lawsuit–Trump v. Twitter
• Section 230 Survives Yet Another Constitutional Challenge–Huber v. Biden
• Another Anti-Vaxxer Jawboning Lawsuit Fails–ICAN v. YouTube
• The First Amendment Protects Twitter’s Fact-Checking and Account Suspension Decisions–O’Handley v. Padilla
• One More Time: Facebook Isn’t a State Actor–Atkinson v. Facebook
• Government Jawboning Doesn’t Turn Internet Services into State Actors–Doe v. Google
• Facebook Defeats Lawsuit By Publishers of Vaccine (Mis?)information–Children’s Health Defense v. Facebook
• Another Must-Carry Lawsuit Against YouTube Fails–Daniels v Alphabet
• Congressional Jawboning of Internet Services Isn’t Actionable–AAPS v. Schiff
• Facebook Isn’t a Constructive Public Trust–Cameron Atkinson v. Facebook
• Section 230 Ends Demonetized YouTuber’s Lawsuit–Lewis v. Google

The post Alex Berenson’s Deplatforming Lawsuit Fails in the Second Circuit–Berenson v. Gottlieb appeared first on Technology & Marketing Law Blog.

What do Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson do for a living?

The obvious answer is that they are Associate Justices of the United States Supreme Court. That is presumably how they spend most of their working hours. But if we look at their income rather than their job descriptions, the answer becomes less obvious.

In 2025, an Associate Justice earned an annual salary of $303,600. That same year, Justice Jackson received approximately $1.2 million for writing her memoir, while Justice Barrett received nearly $850,000 for hers. Justice Neil Gorsuch earned approximately $300,000 from books, and Justice Sonia Sotomayor, although earning considerably less that year, has collected more than $4 million in book advances and royalties during her time on the Court. By the end of 2025, Jackson’s cumulative book earnings for her memoir have surpassed $4 million. Collectively, the Justices have earned more than $13 million from books since joining the Court.

Apparently, for some Justices, deciding cases is not their most lucrative occupation. Writing books is.

While court ethics rules, including the Supreme Court’s own Code of Conduct, cap outside income at just over $30,000, copyright royalties and book advances are an exception. There is no ceiling whatsoever on how much a Justice can collect from a publisher.

Some might think that it is self-evident that a government official—let alone a Supreme Court Justice—generating most of their income, millions of dollars, from a private conglomerate is obviously a serious problem. But if that doesn’t immediately trouble you, perhaps the extraordinary debacle that unfolded at the Supreme Court this week will.

The Fifth Circuit’s Copyright Adventure

On January 12, 2026, the Fifth Circuit decided Vetter v. Resnik. This trainwreck of an opinion has already been discussed at great length, including on this blog, so I can be brief.

In Vetter, the Fifth Circuit held that when an author terminates a copyright grant under the U.S. Copyright Act, that termination can recapture copyright interests worldwide. To reach that surprising conclusion, the Fifth Circuit effectively treated foreign copyrights as mere extensions of U.S. copyright, rather than as independent rights arising under the copyright laws of other countries.

That was quite a move. Original, certainly. But it also potentially upends decades of understanding about copyright territoriality and the relationship between domestic termination rights and foreign copyright systems.

There is no need to mince words. The decision seems flatly wrong. It has been heavily criticized by many, including at length  by Professor Tyler Ochoa on this very blog (and by me in a forthcoming article).

A Copyright Rescue Mission Goes Shockingly Wrong

Fortunately, the Supreme Court exists to resolve exactly this sort of problem. And in recent years it has shown a certain willingness to rein in the Fifth Circuit’s, shall we say, “creativity.”

There was, however, a practical obstacle. The original losing parties, Robert Resnik and his music publishing business, presumably had little incentive to pursue expensive Supreme Court litigation. Understandably so. The foreign rights associated with one relatively old song might not justify the cost of further litigation, even if the resulting precedent has significant industry-wide implications.

But then the music industry came to the rescue. Or so it seemed.

After the Fifth Circuit decision, the four largest music publishers in the world—Sony, Universal, Warner, and BMG—acquired the disputed copyright interest from Resnik and substituted themselves as defendants. They retained Paul Clement, one of the country’s most prominent Supreme Court advocates, and petitioned the Court to review the decision.

The petition attracted five amicus briefs, including submissions from the Motion Picture Association, the RIAA, international entertainment industry groups, and 20 intellectual property law professors (myself included), led by Professor Ochoa.

The petition was fully briefed at the certiorari stage, including an opposition and reply. This was a serious, coordinated, presumably expensive industry effort to obtain Supreme Court review.

And then came an entirely foreseeable problem. One of the four petitioners was BMG. Unfortunately, BMG belongs to the same corporate family as Penguin Random House, the book publisher of four sitting Supreme Court Justices: Barrett, Gorsuch, Jackson, and Sotomayor.

One hardly needs an elaborate theory of judicial ethics to recognize the potential recusal problem. What makes the industry’s choice particularly baffling is that BMG’s participation was hardly indispensable to assembling a formidable coalition of music publishers. Moreover, this was not an unprecedented problem. In May 2025, the Supreme Court confronted a similar situation in Baker v. Coates, an obscure pro se copyright infringement case involving allegations that Ta-Nehisi Coates and others had copied a writer’s work. There, presumably because Penguin Random House’s parent company was among the defendants, the same four Justices (together with Justice Alito, although probably for different reasons) recused themselves.

But a Supreme Court case cannot handle so many recusals. Under 28 U.S.C. § 1, six Justices are required for a Supreme Court quorum. Thus, in Baker, the Supreme Court could not consider the cert petition on its merits.

The exact same thing—only in a much more meaningful dispute—happened here. The same four Justices who have turned Penguin Random House into an extremely generous source of personal income—Barrett, Gorsuch, Jackson, and Sotomayor—recused themselves. Without a quorum, on October 19, 2026, the Supreme Court disposed of the publishers’ petition in Vetter.

Immediate Implications on Cross-Border Licenses

While this is a rather stunning turn of events, the fallout from this particular episode may prove easier to address than the deeper institutional problem it exposes.

Losing a certiorari petition under such circumstances is an almost laughable blunder. Four massive, sophisticated companies inserted themselves into a dispute, recruited a top Supreme Court litigator, assembled a coalition of amici, and spent considerable resources pursuing review. Yet in doing so, they also created the recusal problem that doomed their efforts. We don’t see this kind of ball-dropping at this level every day.

For now, Vetter remains binding within the Fifth Circuit, but other courts need not follow it. There is already real tension between its reasoning and Second Circuit case law. Yet, the decision potentially casts doubt on the ownership of foreign rights under a large number of existing copyright agreements. And because copyright termination rights become exercisable on a rolling basis, that uncertainty is not confined to any fixed set of agreements. While cross-border copyright termination litigation has historically been uncommon, the resulting uncertainty may still complicate licensing and other transactions and generate further disputes.

It is nevertheless quite possible that the Supreme Court will eventually get another opportunity to clean up this mess. And hopefully, future litigants will verify that nobody on their team belongs to the same corporate empire that has been paying Supreme Court Justices millions of dollars for their literary side gigs.

That is the relatively straightforward part of this story.  But the more troubling implications concern the Supreme Court’s ability to adjudicate copyright disputes generally.

The Supreme Court Has a Publishing Problem

Consider Penguin Random House itself.

This is not some small publisher that happens to have multimillion-dollar contracts with several Supreme Court Justices. It is the world’s largest trade book publishing group, with a vast catalog of copyrighted works. Its parent corporation, Bertelsmann, has substantial interests throughout the media and entertainment industries. Its sister company, BMG, is one of the world’s largest music companies, representing millions of musical compositions.

These businesses are not peripheral participants in the copyright ecosystem. They are among its most important commercial actors.

And, as you might expect, Vetter is not the only copyright litigation involving the Bertelsmann companies. Not even close. And the stakes in some of those other cases are much higher.

Consider just one issue: AI training. In March 2026, BMG sued Anthropic in California, alleging that hundreds of its copyrighted song lyrics had been unlawfully used to train generative AI systems. Penguin Random House authors have also played prominent roles in AI-training litigation. Andrea Bartz, the lead plaintiff in the landmark Bartz v. Anthropic case, is a Penguin Random House author (and the company itself was entitled to claim a share of the gigantic $1.5 billion settlement in this case). So are John Grisham, George R. R. Martin, and Jodi Picoult (and many others)—all named plaintiffs in the pending, massive In re OpenAI litigation in the Southern District of New York.

So, it is not hard to imagine important copyright litigation, possibly dealing with AI training, involving Penguin Random House or BMG reaching the Supreme Court. What happens then? If the four Justices recuse themselves, as they did in Vetter, the Court will again lack a quorum. We would be left with the extraordinary situation where some of the country’s most important copyright disputes cannot receive Supreme Court review because too many Justices have lucrative commercial relationships with a sprawling media group.

That alone is a serious institutional problem.

But the difficulty extends much further than that. What if another AI-training case, even one that does not involve BMG or Penguin Random House or even their authors, reaches the Supreme Court? Presumably, those four Justices would not recuse themselves.

Yet such a case will probably require the Court to address many core questions—such as the transformative nature of AI training, the importance of training licenses, and the validity of the market dilution theory. These questions could have enormous consequences for all AI-training cases and could massively affect Penguin Random House and BMG.

So, we arrive at an uncomfortable situation: the Justices may be unable to hear cases directly involving their publisher but remain free to decide comparable cases that could substantially affect the same publisher’s commercial interests.

Of course, we should not take this argument to an absurd extreme. Judges routinely decide cases that have some indirect effect on industries in which they have some financial interests. But surely there is a difference between having an incidental financial interest in an industry and receiving millions of dollars from a private company whose business may be substantially affected by the legal rules one is asked to announce.

And this brings us to the deeper problem: the legitimacy of the Court itself.

When Copyright’s Judges Are Copyright’s Beneficiaries

The problem is not merely that four Justices have lucrative business relationships with one publishing behemoth. It’s that they’ve become multimillion-dollar beneficiaries of the very copyright system they’re supposed to impartially adjudicate.

As we know, copyright law is not simply a mechanism for ensuring that authors and publishers receive as much money as possible. Instead, as the Supreme Court itself noted, it “reflects a balance of competing claims upon the public interest.”

When Justices receive millions of dollars from exploiting their own copyrighted works, they become financially invested in one side of that broader policy landscape. Even if it doesn’t technically require them to recuse themselves, the appearance problem is glaring. Those Justices collect millions of dollars under contracts with a specific company whose interests frequently come before federal courts.

At some point, the magnitude changes the nature of the relationship. A modest royalty check looks like incidental income from intellectual activity. A multimillion-dollar book deal looks like a major commercial relationship. And it is perfectly reasonable for the public to wonder whether those relationships matter.

Consider, for example, Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

In my view, Sotomayor is an exceptional, important, and brilliant Justice, bringing a distinctive voice and perspective that the Court otherwise might lack. She is also arguably the most experienced of the sitting Justices in copyright law, having practiced intellectual property law before serving on the Southern District of New York and the Second Circuit.

For many years on the Supreme Court, she did not author its major copyright opinions. More recently, however, she wrote the majority opinion in Andy Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith and a concurrence in Cox Communications v. Sony Music Entertainment. In both, she advanced positions relatively protective of copyright owners. I actually do not necessarily disagree with her. I supported the result in Warhol, although I found its reasoning problematic. And I was very sympathetic to her analysis in Cox.

I’m obviously not suggesting that her book income influenced either opinion. But why should actual corruption be the standard? As noted, since joining the Court, Sotomayor has received more than $4 million in book income from Penguin Random House and its predecessor companies. During that time, she has published multiple books with the publisher. She continues to participate in promotional events for her books, actively supported and publicized by Penguin Random House. This is an ongoing, meaningful business relationship, involving significant labor and significant sums of money, between a prominent Justice and the largest trade book publisher in the U.S. and in the world. During that time, Sotomayor has authored and joined major opinions addressing the scope of copyright protection, including questions with obvious economic implications for copyright owners and their publishers.

Isn’t there something deeply uncomfortable about this arrangement, even if everything is entirely lawful?

This is fundamentally a question of public confidence. Judicial legitimacy requires more than the absence of demonstrable bribery or misconduct. It requires that the public have good reason to believe that cases are being decided independently, without significant financial relationships casting doubt on the process. The appearance of impropriety, after all, is as important as the actual commission of improper acts when it comes to legitimacy.

And to state the obvious: No, none of this is intended to diminish the serious ethics controversies involving Justices Thomas and Alito, including the revelations about undisclosed luxury travel and questions about recusal. Those controversies deserve sustained scrutiny in their own right. Pointing to the problems created by the Justices’ publishing relationships is not an excuse for anyone else’s actions. The Supreme Court seems remarkably capable of having more than one ethics problem at the same time.

In fact, maybe that’s what makes this situation so troubling. Unlike some of the other controversies, the publishing arrangements are largely out in the open. Everything is seemingly above-board.

And yet four Justices have just been unable to participate in a significant copyright case because of their connections to a publishing conglomerate. Meanwhile, those same relationships may raise legitimate concerns about the appearance of impartiality when the Justices do participate in other copyright disputes.

Should Book Income Get a Free Pass?

The Vetter debacle should be an opportunity to reconsider the Justices’ relationships with commercial publishers, the rules governing book income, and the limits of recusal as a solution. In particular, and while I do not pretend to offer a comprehensive framework for reform here, I believe it is quite difficult to continue and defend an ethics regime that limits most forms of outside income while allowing Justices to receive unlimited advances and royalties from commercial publishers.

Treating these payments as merely passive returns on existing intellectual property is something of a fiction. We are talking about enormous sums paid for books that Justices write and promote while on the bench, whose commercial value is tied to the judicial offices they hold. In substance, how is this so different from teaching, which Justices routinely do, but for which their compensation is subject to strict limits? If anything, teaching generally poses fewer concerns about conflicts of interest. And considering that those limits have not prevented Justices from teaching, we should not assume that similar limits would prevent them from writing.

We are entitled to a Court that can resolve important copyright disputes. And we are entitled to a Court whose decisions carry legitimacy, without reasonable doubts arising from its members’ multimillion-dollar relationships with businesses that stand to benefit or lose from those decisions.

The post Four Justices, One Mega-Publisher, and a Supreme Court Copyright Debacle (Guest Blog Post) appeared first on Technology & Marketing Law Blog.

The conference enables Internet law scholars from around the globe to receive feedback on their in-progress research from their academic peers. More background about the series. We broadly construe the scope of topics that fit within the Internet Law umbrella, and we welcome presentations of research projects at stages ranging from embryonic to unfinished drafts (so long as the draft would still benefit from peer feedback). We also welcome non-presenting discussants.

This year, the conference theme is the “Law of the Bronco,” in recognition of the Chinese Year of the Fire Horse, the 30th anniversary of Judge Easterbrook’s seminal “Cyberspace and the Law of the Horse” article, and the fact that Santa Clara University’s mascot is a bronco. The conference will have several equine-themed elements.

How to Participate

If you would like to participate, email Eric Goldman (egoldman@gmail.com) the following information before the priority deadline of November 18, 2026, noon Pacific time:

* your name, email address, and institutional affiliation
* If you want to present a project: the title of your paper/project and a short abstract (preferably as a PDF that we can post to the event repository)

Please use “2027 Internet Law WIP Request to Participate” as the email subject line.

We expect to respond to participation requests by November 25, 2026. We will consider participation requests received after the priority deadline on a space-available basis.

There is no conference participation fee, but all participants are responsible for their own travel and lodging expenses. There are no publication obligations associated with presenting at the conference. Additional details, including travel and hotel information, soon will be available at the conference web page.

Game Night

Game night is an integral part of the conference experience, and attendees should plan their travel schedules so that they can fully enjoy the festivities. This year, game night will include an equine-themed activity that you will not want to miss, plus many board game options.

More Information

Contact Eric Goldman at egoldman@gmail.com with any questions or comments. We look forward to seeing you in Santa Clara!

The post Call for Papers/Participation, Internet Law Works-in-Progress Conference, SCU, March 6, 2027 appeared first on Technology & Marketing Law Blog.

Damian B Oh, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Robert (Bobbie) “Boyden is a skateboarding legend—known professionally by the nickname Casper—who is credited with having originated, in the 1970s, a skateboarding trick that came to be known as the Casper flip.” You can watch a video demonstrating the move.

Boyden claims that the Hyundai Casper SUV violates his California statutory publicity rights. But his arguments to link the Korean SUV to California were too gnarly, so the case crashes out instead.

* * *

Hyundai introduced a declaration explaining how it landed on this brand name:

the brand strategy team believed the name ‘Casper’ evoked youthful energy as it conjured up images of the child-like cartoon ghost and skateboarding tricks. The name also aligned with [HMC]’s other vehicles since [HMC] often names cars after geographic locations.”…

“As [HMC]’s first mini-SUV, [the Casper SUV] ‘flips’ people’s expectation that the car will be small and weak, when, in fact, it is small and sturdy. [In addition, HMC] ‘flips’ its conventional sales strategy by introducing Casper
as the first car to be sold [exclusively] online.

[Perhaps the IP owners of Casper the Friendly Ghost have stronger legal claims than Boyden does? However, because the ghost is so friendly, it doesn’t haunt the judicial system with bogus lawsuits. Also, allegedly Hyundai didn’t promote this linkage “because of ghosts’ association with death.”].

A few problems with this case should already be obvious:

First, the whole “flip” analogy was subtle. You have to do a lot of cognitive work to make the association they were thinking about. Even when Hyundai explains it, the consumer has to know the Casper Flip by name and then discard the skateboarding concept to extract the “flip” portion as a metaphor for SUV redesigns. I’m sure it made more sense in the brand team’s brainstorming room than when I read it in a court opinion.

Second, Casper made a point of how the “Casper” label has been extended to several other skateboarding moves. There isn’t a clear notion of genericide in publicity rights law. Still, it made me wonder if a name becomes a generic descriptor in a field, can the titular person still exercise control over it?

Third, Casper is the name of a city in Wyoming; and the homophone community of Caspar, California (notice the different spelling) on the Mendocino Coast is a first-rate tourist destination (my wife and I spend a lot of time there). A company can make a geographic reference in its brand without violating anyone’s publicity rights, even if people share the same name.

Fourth, the SUV targeted the South Korean market. It’s not been approved for the North American market. So Hyundai isn’t actually promoting the Casper brand in the US or California.

* * *

That last point highlights a key question: how is this case tied to California? The plaintiff team invested a lot of resources trying to connect the dots, including several “expert” reports.

One “expert” claimed that Hyundai can be sued in California because the Casper SUV marketing invoked a “California ethos”:

“the repeated use of palm trees, beaches, skateboards, and California fashion trends” in HMC marketing materials was “not an accident or something left solely to a marketing agency’s discretion,” but instead was the result of “a series of deliberate design and strategy choices meant to appeal to a specific group of consumers that have a particular affinity—in this case, for California.”

(There are so many songs celebrating the California lifestyle, but this is the one that kept running through my head).

Another “expert” took this angle (emphasis added):

“[T]he Roblox website allowed users to add features to the Casper, do a virtual test drive, and purchase the vehicle through a link on that website. Thus, while it is unclear whether the moment of purchase took place on California servers, it is clear that California infrastructure was crucial to the purchasing process. Customers traveled on a digital highway into California, and either passed through on the way to the purchase point or made the purchase, remotely, in California.”

It’s 2026, not 1995, and yet a so-called expert is invoking the metaphor of Roblox users traveling on a “digital highway” into California??? I’m envisioning those consumers driving their virtual Casper SUVs on the virtual information superhighway to a virtual California car dealer.

* * *

Despite the “experts,” the litigation wipes out for lack of personal jurisdiction. Boyden cannot show that HMC expressly aimed a tort at California.

The appellate court emphatically rejects the idea that a Korean marketing campaign’s “California ethos” can form the predicate for jurisdiction in California:

we begin by dispelling the notion that what Franklin referred to as the “California ethos” could ever be considered as contributing to the establishment of the direct aiming requirement in this or any other case. Many businesses routinely draw on themes or elements evoked by cultures originating from beyond the borders of the state(s) or countr(ies) in which they operate. Such businesses include, for example, restaurants, martial arts studios, foreign language academies, and sellers of apparel. To suggest that a restaurant chain in Japan that offers only gumbo, jambalaya, etouffee, Abita beer, and beignets, that serves those dishes only to customers in Japan, and whose marketing features a fleur-de-lis, mardi gras beads, and zydeco music, should, by virtue of that menu and marketing, be exposed to an increased risk of being haled into court in Louisiana is to offend traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice. By the same token, so too would it offend such notions to suggest that a restaurant chain in Louisiana that offers only sushi, sashimi, ramen, miso, and sake, that serves those dishes only to customers in Louisiana, and whose marketing features images of Mount Fuji, cherry blossoms, and samurai swords should, by virtue of that menu and marketing, be exposed to an increased risk of being haled into court in Japan….we reject Boyden’s argument that HMC’s use of the “California ethos” in its marketing should influence our express aiming analysis

If a judge eviscerated my expert report like this, I would run home crying to my mama. It almost felt like Justice Kelety enjoyed detailing how the expert had immolated his credibility. (The lawyers who solicited and based their advocacy on this expert report shouldn’t feel too great about their decisions either).

There are problems with other parts of the case:

• “defendant’s use of digital marketing services made available to it by California-based digital technology companies is, by itself, too slender a reed on which to premise a claim of sufficient aiming activity”
• “the opinions of Franklin and Woolley seem speculative in many respects” because they repeatedly assumed certain facts were “more likely than not” true.
• “neither the declarations of Boyden’s marketing expert nor the declaration of his counsel complied” with California’s procedural rules for making declarations. (Oops).

* * *

There is a good reason why plaintiff’s lawyers generally don’t bring overly speculative publicity rights lawsuits. The California statute (3344) says the “prevailing party in any action under this section shall also be entitled to attorney’s fees and costs.” In other words, the attorney fee shift is mandatory, not permissive. That puts plaintiffs on the hook for potentially big bucks if they lose, like they did here. Boyden will be receiving Hyundai’s giant bill for its attorneys’ fees, which Team Boyden helped inflate by overlitigating the jurisdiction issue. That payment will be on top of any out-of-pocket payments Team Boyden already made to its “experts.”

Case Citation: Boyden v. Hyundai Motor Co., 2026 WL 3046224 (Cal. App. Ct. Oct. 12, 2026).

Personnel notes: The plaintiff lawyers in this case were Ochs Law Firm (Jason Edward Ochs) and  Wagstaff & Cartmell (Adam S. Davis and Austin P. Brane). The plaintiff ‘s experts included “the head of strategy at automaker Nissan’s marketing agency, Jeremy Franklin, who described himself as an expert in automotive and digital marketing” and communications professor Samuel C. Woolley, who has an endowed chair in “disinformation studies” (does his scope of research include disinformation in expert reports?).

The post Marketing a “California Ethos” Doesn’t Support a California Publicity Rights Lawsuit–Boyden v. Hyundai appeared first on Technology & Marketing Law Blog.

As part of the arrest and investigation, the police seized Stathas’ car, cellphone, wallet, and other electronics. Per 18 U.S.C. § 2428(a)(1), the judge should have ordered (but did not) a forfeiture of “any property, real or personal, that was used or intended to be used to commit or to facilitate the commission of such violation.” The forfeiture should include the cellphone (Stathas used it to communicate extensively with the victim), but does that include the data on the cellphone, which arguably is neither real property nor personal property?

Produced by ChatGPT October 2026

After Stathas’ sentencing, the police agreed to return his car, wallet, and other electronics. If the police had gotten a forfeiture order, they wouldn’t have to return his cellphone at all, but instead they agreed to return the phone only after wiping it “because it contained obscene, sexually explicit conversations between Stathas and the victim, as well as the victim’s identifying information.” “Stathas responded that although he did not object to the government deleting his conversations with the victim, other data on the phone should be preserved because it was meaningful to him personally or relevant to a possible civil lawsuit against the West Bend Police Department.”

The Seventh Circuit says no:

the government’s retention and destruction of the data on Stathas’s cellphone is reasonable under the circumstances. The district court’s finding that the phone was rife with “numerous sexually explicit messages and images” sent to the victim as well as “significant personally identifying information about her” is not clear error. The record reveals that these conversations occurred over multiple apps on the phone and that Stathas also received explicit photos of the minor. The court did not clearly err by crediting the government’s assertion that “no procedure short of digitally wiping” the phone would eliminate all criminal or harmful material. Given the importance of the government’s interest in ensuring none of this material remains on Stathas’s phone, the district court did not abuse its discretion in concluding that the government could delete the phone’s data before returning it.

I haven’t seen a lot of discussion about wiping cellphone as a criminal remedy. In a case like this, it makes sense that the data associated with the crime should not go back into the criminal’s hand. At the same time, a cellphone wipe deletes a lot of data that may have nothing to do with the crime. Depending on the nature of that data and the availability of backups, a cellphone wipe could profoundly affect a person’s life. For example, if the cellphone had the data necessary to establish Stathas’ legal claim against the police, the cellphone wipe might extinguish his legal claim entirely.

The severity of a cellphone wipe brought to mind the Supreme Court’s discussion about the importance of cellphones (in a slightly different legal context) in Riley v. California, 573 U.S. 373 (2014):

The term “cell phone” is itself misleading shorthand; many of these devices are in fact minicomputers that also happen to have the capacity to be used as a telephone. They could just as easily be called cameras, video players, rolodexes, calendars, tape recorders, libraries, diaries, albums, televisions, maps, or newspapers.

One of the most notable distinguishing features of modern cell phones is their immense storage capacity….

The current top-selling smart phone has a standard capacity of 16 gigabytes (and is available with up to 64 gigabytes). Sixteen gigabytes translates to millions of pages of text, thousands of pictures, or hundreds of videos. Cell phones couple that capacity with the ability to store many different types of information: Even the most basic phones that sell for less than $20 might hold photographs, picture messages, text messages, Internet browsing history, a calendar, a thousand-entry phone book, and so on. We expect that the gulf between physical practicability and digital capacity will only continue to widen in the future.

The storage capacity of cell phones has several interrelated consequences for privacy. First, a cell phone collects in one place many distinct types of information—an address, a note, a prescription, a bank statement, a video—that reveal much more in combination than any isolated record. Second, a cell phone’s capacity allows even just one type of information to convey far more than previously possible. The sum of an individual’s private life can be reconstructed through a thousand photographs labeled with dates, locations, and descriptions; the same cannot be said of a photograph or two of loved ones tucked into a wallet. Third, the data on a phone can date back to the purchase of the phone, or even earlier. A person might carry in his pocket a slip of paper reminding him to call Mr. Jones; he would not carry a record of all his communications with Mr. Jones for the past several months, as would routinely be kept on a phone.

Finally, there is an element of pervasiveness that characterizes cell phones but not physical records. Prior to the digital age, people did not typically carry a cache of sensitive personal information with them as they went about their day. Now it is the person who is not carrying a cell phone, with all that it contains, who is the exception. According to one poll, nearly three-quarters of smart phone users report being within five feet of their phones most of the time, with 12% admitting that they even use their phones in the shower. A decade ago police officers searching an arrestee might have occasionally stumbled across a highly personal item such as a diary. But those discoveries were likely to be few and far between. Today, by contrast, it is no exaggeration to say that many of the more than 90% of American adults who own a cell phone keep on their person a digital record of nearly every aspect of their lives—from the mundane to the intimate….

Mobile application software on a cell phone, or “apps,” offer a range of tools for managing detailed information about all aspects of a person’s life. There are apps for Democratic Party news and Republican Party news; apps for alcohol, drug, and gambling addictions; apps for sharing prayer requests; apps for tracking pregnancy symptoms; apps for planning your budget; apps for every conceivable hobby or pastime; apps for improving your romantic life. There are popular apps for buying or selling just about anything, and the records of such transactions may be accessible on the phone indefinitely. There are over a million apps available in each of the two major app stores; the phrase “there’s an app for that” is now part of the popular lexicon. The average smart phone user has installed 33 apps, which together can form a revealing montage of the user’s life.

In 1926, Learned Hand observed that it is “a totally different thing to search a man’s pockets and use against him what they contain, from ransacking his house for everything which may incriminate him.” If his pockets contain a cell phone, however, that is no longer true. Indeed, a cell phone search would typically expose to the government far more than the most exhaustive search of a house: A phone not only contains in digital form many sensitive records previously found in the home; it also contains a broad array of private information never found in a home in any form—unless the phone is.

Case Citation: U.S. v. Stathas, 2026 WL 3061816 (7th Cir. October 13, 2026)

The post Should Police Wipe a Criminal’s Cellphone Before Returning It?–U.S. v. Stathas appeared first on Technology & Marketing Law Blog.

Created by ChatGPT May 2026

The issue is: if a website imposes a government-compelled age authentication wall, what percentage of users will stop at the authentication wall, either because the users turn around or fail to navigate the process? I call that percentage the “balk” rate. For background on prior studies and why balk rates can vary widely, read my prior coverage first.

I’m now reporting on a study by All About Cookies entitled “72% of Americans Don’t Trust the Companies Verifying Their Age Online.” The writeup qualifies the headline claim: “72% of Americans express low levels of trust in the companies and services handling age verification data, including 40% who do not trust them at all.” The other 32% say they “slightly” trust the authenticators.

This chart shows what happened when users were confronted with an age authentication wall (users could select multiple options):

I disregard the first and third options because they are self-reporting, and that isn’t an “authentication” at all. Instead, focus on the bottom three options, all of which are rejections of the age authentication wall (go somewhere else, abandon the effort, or bypass the wall using VPNs). The first two are balk rates; the third also rejects the age authentication wall.

One way of reading this data is that only 31% of consumers were willing to age-authenticate; all other consumers chose some other non-authentication option if they could. Because users could pick multiple choices, we can’t combine the three rejection options (which adds up to 32%) and compare it to the 31% who said they authenticate. But even if we take the most conservative reading of this data and say that there’s at least an 11% balk rate, that’s still a lot of disruption of existing user activity.

The report summarizes this chart with this confusing statement: “Age verification laws don’t get more people to verify: 31% complete verification in states with and without laws. Instead, people in law states are 7x more likely to give up entirely and 4x more likely to use a VPN.” The survey didn’t provide the supporting data to explain the 7x assessment, but I interpret it as a warning that the quantity of consumer balks will soar as more states’ age authentication mandates come into effect.

The next chart asks how comfortable users would be sharing the specific items of data to get through an age authentication wall:

As you can see, the “least” troubling option is an automatically scanned selfie, which more than 2/3 said they would be uncomfortable with sharing. Credit card authentication–which used to be the benchmark for age authentication in the 1990s and is now considered no longer credible–made nearly 9 of 10 consumers uncomfortable.

Over time, these discomfort rates might organically decline as age authentication mandates become ubiquitous, which will cause consumers become to desensitized to the omnipresent privacy invasions.

Zero-knowledge proofs might also change how consumers feel about sharing their government-issued IDs because the ID contents would not be shared. However, to reach that point, consumers first will have to overcome the many troubling implications of installing a government-issued digital ID on their device. Personally, I’m a hard “no” on digital IDs.

We can’t directly infer a balk rate from this data, but it’s not good. When users are uncomfortable with the data disclosure, they weigh the costs/benefits of proceeding. If they can’t easily assess the benefits–which will often be the case with new services that the consumer doesn’t know well–then the discomfort is likely to increase balk rates. As I mention in my Segregate-and-Suppress paper, the resulting changes in consumer behavior are likely to hinder new market entrants and overall market dynamism.

Overall, I don’t see how anyone, especially government regulators, can look at the emerging balk rate data and think that the Internet is going to be just fine when online age authentication mandates become ubiquitous.

Blog Posts on Segregate-and-Suppress Obligations

• More Data on Online Age Authentication Balk Rates
• Fifth Circuit Keeps Doing Fifth Circuit Things –SEAT v. Paxton
• How Often Do Consumers Balk at Doing Online Age Authentication?
• Court Enjoins Another Arkansas Segregate-and-Suppress Law–NetChoice v. Griffin
• Too Many Courts Are Letting States Take Wrecking Balls to the Internet (Roundup)
• Texas Judge Enjoins App Store Authentication Law–CCIA and SEAT v. Paxton
• Courts Enjoin Internet Censorship Laws in Louisana and Arkansas
• Challenge to Maryland’s “Kid Code” Survives Motion to Dismiss–NetChoice v. Brown
• My Testimony Against Mandatory Online Age Authentication
• Read the Published Version of My Paper Against Mandatory Online Age Authentication
• Prof. Goldman’s Statement on the Supreme Court’s Demolition of the Internet in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton
• Court Permanently Enjoins Ohio’s Segregate-and-Suppress/Parental Consent Law–NetChoice v. Yost
• Arkansas’ Social Media Safety Act Permanently Enjoined—NetChoice v. Griffin
• Why I Emphatically Oppose Online Age Verification Mandates
• California’s Age-Appropriate Design Code (AADC) Is Completely Unconstitutional (Multiple Ways)–NetChoice v. Bonta
• Another Conflict Between Privacy Laws and Age Authentication–Murphy v. Confirm ID
• Recapping Three Social Media Addiction Opinions from Fall (Catch-Up Post)
• District Court Blocks More of Texas’ Segregate-and-Suppress Law (HB 18)–SEAT v. Paxton
• Comments on the Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton SCOTUS Oral Arguments on Mandatory Online Age “Verification”
• California’s “Protecting Our Kids from Social Media Addiction Act” Is Partially Unconstitutional…But Other Parts Are Green-Lighted–NetChoice v. Bonta
• Section 230 Defeats Underage User’s Lawsuit Against Grindr–Doll v. Pelphrey
• Five Decisions Illustrate How Section 230 Is Fading Fast
• Internet Law Professors Submit a SCOTUS Amicus Brief on Online Age Authentication–Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton
• Court Enjoins the Utah “Minor Protection in Social Media Act”–NetChoice v. Reyes
• Another Texas Online Censorship Law Partially Enjoined–CCIA v. Paxton
• When It Comes to Section 230, the Ninth Circuit is a Chaos Agent–Estate of Bride v. YOLO
• Court Dismisses School Districts’ Lawsuits Over Social Media “Addiction”–In re Social Media Cases
• Ninth Circuit Strikes Down Key Part of the CA Age-Appropriate Design Code (the Rest is TBD)–NetChoice v. Bonta
• Mississippi’s Age-Authentication Law Declared Unconstitutional–NetChoice v. Fitch
• Indiana’s Anti-Online Porn Law “Is Not Close” to Constitutional–Free Speech Coalition v. Rokita
• Fifth Circuit Once Again Disregards Supreme Court Precedent and Mangles Section 230–Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton
• Snapchat Isn’t Liable for Offline Sexual Abuse–VV v. Meta
• 2023 Quick Links: Censorship
• Court Enjoins Ohio’s Law Requiring Parental Approval for Children’s Social Media Accounts–NetChoice v. Yost
• Many Fifth Circuit Judges Hope to Eviscerate Section 230–Doe v. Snap
• Louisiana’s Age Authentication Mandate Avoids Constitutional Scrutiny Using a Legislative Drafting Trick–Free Speech Coalition v. LeBlanc
• Section 230 Once Again Applies to Claims Over Offline Sexual Abuse–Doe v. Grindr
• Comments on the Ruling Declaring California’s Age-Appropriate Design Code (AADC) Unconstitutional–NetChoice v. Bonta
• Two Separate Courts Reiterate That Online Age Authentication Mandates Are Unconstitutional
• Minnesota’s Attempt to Copy California’s Constitutionally Defective Age Appropriate Design Code is an Utter Fail (Guest Blog Post)
• Do Mandatory Age Verification Laws Conflict with Biometric Privacy Laws?–Kuklinski v. Binance
• Why I Think California’s Age-Appropriate Design Code (AADC) Is Unconstitutional
• An Interview Regarding AB 2273/the California Age-Appropriate Design Code (AADC)
• Op-Ed: The Plan to Blow Up the Internet, Ostensibly to Protect Kids Online (Regarding AB 2273)
• A Short Explainer of Why California’s Social Media Addiction Bill (AB 2408) Is Terrible
• A Short Explainer of How California’s Age-Appropriate Design Code Bill (AB2273) Would Break the Internet
• Is the California Legislature Addicted to Performative Election-Year Stunts That Threaten the Internet? (Comments on AB2408)
• Omegle Denied Section 230 Dismissal–AM v. Omegle
• Snapchat Isn’t Liable for a Teacher’s Sexual Predation–Doe v. Snap
• Will California Eliminate Anonymous Web Browsing? (Comments on CA AB 2273, The Age-Appropriate Design Code Act)
• Minnesota Wants to Ban Under-18s From User-Generated Content Services
• California’s Latest Effort To Keep Some Ads From Reaching Kids Is Misguided And Unconstitutional (Forbes Cross-Post)
• Backpage Gets Important 47 USC 230 Win Against Washington Law Trying to Combat Online Prostitution Ads (Forbes Cross-Post & More)
• Backpage Gets TRO Against Washington Law Attempting to Bypass Section 230–Backpage v. McKenna
• MySpace Wins Another 47 USC 230 Case Over Sexual Assaults of Users–Doe II v. MySpace
• MySpace Gets 230 Win in Fifth Circuit–Doe v. MySpace
• Website Isn’t Liable When Users Lie About Their Ages–Doe v. SexSearch

The post Some New Data on Age Authentication Balk Rates appeared first on Technology & Marketing Law Blog.

The applicable Washington state statute restricts the interception of communications between two individuals. The Supreme Court says that a corporation isn’t an “individual” for purposes of this statute. Thus, the user’s interaction with the corporate-run website didn’t have sufficient human involvement:

no party disputes that SCH is a corporation, and each communication involved only one of the plaintiffs and a fully automated system SCH owns and operates. Thus, under the plain language of RCW 9.73.030(1), the plaintiffs did not communicate with an “individual” when searching or clicking and receiving automated responses. The WPA provision at issue covers only private communications transmitted between “two or more individuals.”

A concurring judge agrees with the statutory parsing but adds that “private communications transmitted between an individual and individuals working for a corporation are protected by our privacy act.”

Implications

This opinion only dealt with Washington state’s ECPA equivalent and depended entirely on the court’s textual interpretation of that statute. As a result, this ruling isn’t likely to have significant implications for other states’ ECPA-equvalent laws or other legal doctrines.

Still, this ruling essentially ends the ability of Meta Pixel plaintiffs to claim violations of Washington’s ECPA-equivalent communications privacy law. That may not end their cases overall, but it shuts down one path to plaintiff success.

Further, I continue to wonder if the entire Meta Pixels litigation industry–a massive enterprise with hundreds of lawsuits–may be founded on legally unstable grounds. The pixel cases routinely survive a motion to dismiss at the lower court level, but on appeal, the cases have repeatedly turned sour. Those appellate court rulings can undercut dozens or hundreds of other rulings, hollowing out the entire Meta Pixels litigation genre. Plaintiff lawyers have invested a lot of energy in the Pixels cases, and some or all of that has been socially unproductive.

Case Citation: Baker v. Seattle Children’s Hospital, 2026 WL 3023818 (Wash. Supreme Ct. Oct. 8, 2026)

More Posts on the Pixel Cases and Related Claims

• LinkedIn’s Insight Tag Creates Legal Entanglements–Doe v. LinkedIn
• Third Circuit Rejects a Meta Pixels Case–Cole v. Quest Diagnostics
• The Wrap Taxonomy Vexes the Judge in the LinkedIn Insight Tag Cases
• The Second Circuit Is Done With Meta Pixels VPPA Cases–Hughes v. NFL
• Court Rejects Trespass to Chattels Claim Over Placing Cookies–Doe v. Tenet
• Clickwrap Formed Even When a Consumer Has Limited Time to Act–Washington v. Flixbus
• Meta Pixels Case Dismissed by Second Circuit–Solomon v. Triller
• Leaky TOS Formation = No TOS Formation–Snyder v. G6
• The VPPA May Be a Dinosaur Statute, But It’s Very Much Alive in the Second Circuit–Salazar v. NBA
• Pixel Case Against Google “Jumps the Shark”–Doe I v. Google (Catch Up Post)
• Think You Understand Online Trespass to Chattels Law? Think Again–In re Meta Healthcare Pixels
• More Chaos in the Law of Online Contract Formation
• Privacy Lawsuit Based on Website Tracking by Service Provider Trimmed

The post Washington Supreme Court Dismisses Meta Pixels Case–Baker v. Seattle Children’s Hospital appeared first on Technology & Marketing Law Blog.