Ancestry.com publishes 450,000 old yearbooks in the form of 730M records that contain, at least, “the person’s name, photograph, school name, yearbook year, and city or town (at the time of the yearbook).” Ancestry doesn’t disclose how it acquires the…
This case doesn’t break much new ground doctrinally, but it’s a characteristically clear opinion from Judge Koh that offers some helpful lessons/reminders. The app in question is called “Sideline,” “a paid service that allows users to create a ‘virtual,’ alternative…
[This post covers three recent print-on-demand cases. After the Ohio State writeup, keep reading for more fun and confusion.] Redbubble operates in the print-on-demand industry, but it’s adopted a different organizational structure than some of its competitors. Redbubble outsources manufacturing…
This is a data breach lawsuit. Plaintiff was a patron of a restaurant (PDQ) that suffered a breach that compromised credit card payment information. The breach occurred because a hacker gained access to customer data through “an outside vendor’s remote…
Lawsuits over voice-activated assistants (and other smart home devices) are interesting. Plaintiffs have been creative about who asserts the claims to navigate around the issue that often sinks class actions: arbitration. This has resulted in claims brought by neighbors, spouses,…
Section 230’s 25th anniversary sent me on a nostalgia kick, which prompted me to revisit some articles that influenced me when I first started thinking about Internet Law (I graduated grad school in 1994). Due to their age, many of…
This is another entry in my decade-long coverage of doctors suing patients for online reviews. The plaintiff is a Botox provider. The defendant-patient wrote a critical review on Yelp. The doctor sued the patient for defamation and related claims. The…
Members of Congress often send letters to various industry participants complaining about marketplace phenomena. Sometimes these letters demand additional information; other times, the letters just express opprobrium. All of these letters are backed by a coercive threat that the Congressmember…
Perez sued LinkedIn for suspending his account. In October, a court in Southern District of Texas dismissed the complaint because LinkedIn isn’t a state actor. The court gave Perez the opportunity to refile in the Northern District of California, which…
The plaintiff is Dr. Carter Page, who gained notoriety from his alleged role in Trump’s interactions with Russia, including multiple references in the Steele dossier. In 2017, he sued Oath (as owner of Yahoo and Huffington Post) for defamation over…