Mealey's Cyber Tech & E-Commerce : Mealey's : Legal News & Analysis

Mealey's Cyber Tech & E-Commerce

December 21, 2023
Binance, CEO Say Guilty Pleas Do Not Negate Motion To Dismiss SEC Case

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Securities and Exchange Commission fails to show in a notice of supplemental authority how recent guilty pleas from a cryptocurrency platform and its founder on criminal money laundering charges are relevant to the commission’s civil case against them, the firm and its chief executive officer say in response to the SEC’s notice.
December 20, 2023
FTC Places 5-Year Ban On Rite Aid Using AI Facial Recognition Software

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Rite Aid Corp.’s artificial intelligence facial recognition software generated thousands of false matches, often targeting women or people of color, the Federal Trade Commission said Dec. 19 in announcing that it was imposing a five-year ban on the retailer’s use of the technology.
December 19, 2023
Notice Of $25M Settlement Over Apple Family Sharing Distributed To Class Members

LOS ANGELES — Notice of a $25 million settlement was recently distributed to putative class members who subscribed to Apple Inc.’s “Family Sharing” service after a California state court judge granted preliminary approval to the payment to settle claims that Apple violated California’s unfair competition law (UCL) and other statutes by misrepresenting the terms of Family Sharing.
December 15, 2023
Social Media Firms Seek Interlocutory Appeal In Adolescent Addiction MDL

OAKLAND, Calif. — A month after the operators of several of the largest social media platforms were only partly successful in obtaining dismissal of a product liability multidistrict ligation (MDL) over the purported addictive qualities of their platforms for adolescents, the defendants filed a motion in California federal court seeking certification of the dismissal ruling for the purpose of filing an interlocutory appeal to have the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals address the case’s “novel questions of law,” notably “the applicability of products liability torts to the digital world.”
December 15, 2023
Judge Denies Insurer’s Summary Judgment Motion In Ransomware Coverage Suit

SEATTLE — A Washington judge denied an insurer’s motion for summary judgment in an insured’s breach of costs and bad faith lawsuit seeking coverage under a Cyber and Multimedia Liability Insurance Policy for its losses arising from a ransomware attack, finding that there are genuinely disputed issues of material fact regarding the insured’s claims.
December 15, 2023
Labels Ask 5th Circuit To Affirm $46M Award For ISP’s Contributory Infringement

NEW ORLEANS — An internet service provider’s (ISP) knowledge that its subscribers were engaging in online “mass infringement” of their copyrighted music, coupled with its failure to act on that knowledge, were more than sufficient to support a jury’s finding of contributory infringement and an accompanying damages award of $46 million, record labels argue in their appellee brief in the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.
December 14, 2023
Musk Tells High Court SEC Violated 1st Amendment Rights In Consent Decree

WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a petition for a writ of certiorari, Elon Musk tells the U.S. Supreme Court that the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals erred when it affirmed that a consent order between him and the Securities and Exchange Commission could not be changed after he agreed to it, arguing that the SEC demanded that he waive his First Amendment rights as part of the agreement.
December 13, 2023
Authors Amend Copyright Claim Against Meta For Using Books To Train AI

SAN FRANCISCO — Three weeks after a California federal judge called their theory of copyright infringement “nonsensical,” 13 authors filed an amended putative class complaint against Meta Platforms Inc. dropping all claims except for a direct copyright infringement claim against Meta for using their copyrighted works to train its AI chatbots.
December 13, 2023
Amici Back Coders’ Facial Challenge To DMCA’s Anti-Circumvention Provisions

WASHINGTON, D.C. — In their second time before the District of Columbia Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, this time appealing the dismissal of their facial challenge to the anti-circumvention and anti-trafficking provisions of Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), two software coders were supported by the filing of four amicus curiae briefs, including one by legal scholars, that are critical of the statute’s technological protection measures (TPMs).
December 12, 2023
Restaurants Voluntarily Dismiss Claims Accusing Grubhub Of Providing Faulty Info

DENVER — A motion for voluntary dismissal filed by restaurants that accused Grubhub Inc. in a putative class complaint of deceiving consumers by offering faulty information regarding restaurants that did not partner with it was granted by a federal judge in Colorado.
December 12, 2023
SEC: Judge Should Deny Motion To Dismiss After Guilty Pleas From Binance, CEO

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Securities and Exchange Commission says in a notice of supplemental authority that recent guilty pleas from a cryptocurrency platform and its founder and CEO on criminal money laundering charges from the U.S. Department of Justice provide more reason for a federal court in the District of Columbia to deny a motion to dismiss its civil complaint against the platform and its CEO.
December 12, 2023
Google Engaged In Tying, Monopolization, Jury Finds In Epic Trial

SAN FRANCISCO — After 15 days of oral arguments in the antitrust battle between Google LLC and Epic Games Inc. related to the sale of apps and related items in the Google Play store, a California federal jury on Dec. 11 concluded that Google violated the Sherman Act and California’s Cartwright Act through monopolization, tying and unlawful restraint of trade.
December 12, 2023
DOJ Tells Supreme Court Florida, Texas Social Media Laws Violate 1st Amendment

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), on behalf of the United States, submitted one of 40 amicus curiae briefs filed in the U.S. Supreme Court in support of two internet trade associations that sued Florida and Texas over the states’ respective social media content moderation laws that the plaintiffs say run afoul of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
December 11, 2023
Justice Alito Dissents To Intervention Denial In Social Media Coercion Suit

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Acknowledging that intervention in U.S. Supreme Court cases “is reserved for unusual circumstances,” Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. on Dec. 11 dissented to the court’s denial of a motion by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to intervene in a suit over the federal government’s potential coercion of social media platforms and violations of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, opining that the presidential candidate may be irreparably harmed because his parallel lawsuit is presently stalled in a trial court pending resolution of the present case.
December 11, 2023
Supreme Court Passes On Taking Another TCPA Autodialer Case

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Despite a petitioner’s argument that there is “continuing and substantial confusion . . . over the definition of an autodialer” in the context of the Telephone Consumer Privacy Act (TCPA) since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2021 ruling in Facebook Inc. v. Duguid, the high court on Dec. 11 denied the petition for certiorari in his putative class complaint against Meta Platforms Inc. over unsolicited text messages sent to Facebook users.
December 11, 2023
High Court Won’t Hear 1st, 4th Amendment Questions Over Livestreamed Traffic Stop

WASHINGTON, D.C. — In its Dec. 11 order list, the U.S. Supreme Court denied competing petitions for certiorari filed by a North Carolina police department and a man who livestreamed a traffic stop by two of the department’s officers, declining to address their respective questions under the Fourth and First Amendments to the U.S. Constitution related to free speech, protected activity, qualified immunity, lawfully seized vehicles and officer safety, among other things.
December 11, 2023
Panel Upholds Win For Zillow On Copyright Claims By Photographer

SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge in Washington correctly dismissed allegations of copyright infringement leveled against Zillow Inc., the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled Dec. 8, agreeing that a photographer failed to establish volitional conduct by the online real estate website.
December 11, 2023
Digitization Dispute Belongs In California, New York Federal Judge Concludes

NEW YORK — A group of copyright infringement defendants working to collect, digitize and upload 78 rpm phonographic records won transfer on Dec. 8 of the allegations against them from a federal court in New York to the Northern District of California.
December 08, 2023
Judge Dismisses UCL Suit Against Amazon For Fake Recycled Ink Cartridge Sales

LOS ANGELES — A California federal judge dismissed with prejudice a lawsuit accusing Amazon.com Inc. and its subsidiaries of violating California’s unfair competition law (UCL) and other laws by permitting third-party sellers to post allegedly deceptive listings for recycled printer ink cartridges, thereby diverting business from authentic ink cartridge recyclers, after finding the claims barred by Amazon’s statutory immunity as an online publisher.
December 08, 2023
Trump: Mooting Of Twitter 1st Amendment Row Requires Vow To Not Repeat Actions

PASADENA, Calif. — Referring to the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Acheson Hotels LLC v. Laufer in a citation of supplemental authority, Donald J. Trump told the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals that a declaration of mootness in his censorship lawsuit against Twitter Inc. necessitates a promise by the social network operator that it will not repeat the behavior that led the former president to level claims against it for violation of the First Amendment.
December 07, 2023
9th Circuit Finds Crypto Firm’s Delegation Provision Not Unconscionable

SAN FRANCISCO — A cryptocurrency exchange customer, who lost funds in a phishing incident, failed to establish that the delegation provision in the exchange’s arbitration agreement is unconscionable and unenforceable, a Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel ruled, reversing a trial court’s denial of the exchange’s motion to compel arbitration of the customer’s Electronic Funds Transfer Act (EFTA) putative class claim against it.
December 07, 2023
San Francisco Says Online Companies Are Violating Flavored E-Cigarettes Ban

SAN FRANCISCO — The San Francisco City Attorney’s Office filed a lawsuit in California state court against three e-cigarette distributors based in California that the office claims are violating San Francisco’s bans on e-cigarettes and flavored tobacco by selling flavored e-cigarette products online and shipping the products into the city, seeking penalties under California’s unfair competition law (UCL).
December 07, 2023
Judge Preliminarily Enjoins Montana’s TikTok Ban

MISSOULA, Mont. — Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen failed to establish that a newly enacted law banning the TikTok social network from being used anywhere in the state is primarily a consumer protection law, a Montana federal judge held as he granted preliminary injunction motions to prevent the law from going into effect, which were filed by TikTok Inc. and a group of the social network’s users.
December 07, 2023
New Jersey Federal Magistrate Judge Denies ‘Vast Expansion’ Of Copyright Case

TRENTON, N.J. — A request to add more than 320 copyrighted works to existing copyright infringement litigation was largely denied Dec. 6 by a federal magistrate judge in New Jersey, who said the proposed amendments would be prejudicial.
December 06, 2023
9th Circuit Reverses, Remands $5.2M Settlement Of Tinder Age-Bias Class Claims

SAN FRANCISCO — The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on Dec. 5 reversed and remanded a $5.2 million settlement to resolve claims accusing a dating app of discriminatory age-based pricing in violation of the Unruh Civil Rights Act and California’s unfair competition law (UCL), ruling in favor of objectors who contended that the class representative was inadequate.