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

Mealey's Cyber Tech & E-Commerce

January 05, 2024
Merck, Insurers Ask N.J. High Court To Dismiss Cyberattack Coverage Dispute

TRENTON, N.J. — Merck & Co. Inc. and certain insurers filed stipulations in the New Jersey Supreme Court seeking dismissal of the insurers from Merck’s lawsuit seeking coverage for its losses arising from a June 2017 malware/cyberattack.
January 05, 2024
Amicus Asks 2nd Circuit To Clarify Fair Use Standard In Digital Library Suit

NEW YORK — Filing a brief in support of neither party in an appeal by Internet Archive (IA) of a New York federal court’s finding that the “controlled digital lending” practiced in its digital library did not constitute fair use under the Copyright Act, amicus curiae HathiTrust asks the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals to specify that fair use, “as an ‘equitable rule of reason,’” should be decided on a case-by-case basis “to avoid rigid application of the copyright statute when . . . it would stifle the very creativity” protected by the statute.
January 04, 2024
9th Circuit Consolidates 3 Terror-Aiding Cases Seeking Remand

SAN FRANCISCO — Appeals in three cases in which surviving family members of terror victims bring claims against Twitter Inc., Facebook Inc. and Google LLC under the Antiterrorism Act (ATA) were consolidated Jan. 3 by the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals as it prepares to consider the appellants’ parallel motions to remand the lawsuits for the purpose of filing amended complaints in the wake of recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings and similar terror-aiding suits.
January 04, 2024
Apple, Epic Defend Their Certiorari Bids Over UCL Antitrust, National Injunction

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court recently announced that on Jan. 12 it will consider related petitions for certiorari filed by Epic Games Inc. and Apple Inc. that both sprung from the companies’ disputes over Apple’s alleged antitrust violations under California’s unfair competition law (UCL) and a trial court’s imposition of a nationwide injunction barring some of the purported anti-competitive practices.
January 04, 2024
Montana Attorney General Appeals Injunction Of TikTok Ban To 9th Circuit

SAN FRANCISCO — One month after a Montana law banning any use of the TikTok social network within the state was preliminarily enjoined from taking effect, Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen filed a notice informing the Montana federal court that he was appealing the ruling to the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.
January 03, 2024
Amici Ask Supreme Court To Uphold Delegation Clause In Arbitration Agreement

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Chamber of Commerce headed up a diverse coalition of organizations on the third of three amicus curiae briefs filed in support of Coinbase Inc. as the U.S. Supreme Court decides the priority and enforceability of a delegation clause when deciding the arbitrability of claims against the cryptocurrency firm.
January 02, 2024
Federal Judge Finds Crypto Firm Sold Coins As Unregistered Securities

NEW YORK — Weeks before a trial is set to begin, a federal judge in New York partially granted the Securities and Exchange Commission’s motion for summary judgment against cryptocurrency firm Terraform Labs Pte. Ltd. and its CEO, finding that there is no dispute that the firm’s crypto assets were sold as unregistered securities.
December 22, 2023
Amici Brief High Court On Platforms’, Users’ Rights In Social Media Coercion Suit

WASHINGTON, D.C. — On the heels of the federal government filing its opening merits brief in a dispute over whether social media platforms’ content moderation decisions were made as state actors, amicus curiae briefs supporting neither party were filed Dec. 21 by a think tank, civil liberties groups, trade associations and research organizations, asking the U.S. Supreme Court to not lose focus on the rights of internet platform operators and their users under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, even though they are not specifically represented in the lawsuit.
December 22, 2023
9th Circuit Affirms Dismissal Of Minor’s Suit Against Roblox Due To No Controversy

SAN FRANCISCO — A Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel on Dec. 21 affirmed the dismissal of a minor’s putative class action against video game company Roblox Corp. for violating California’s unfair competition law (UCL) based on its handling of minors’ request for refunds of “Robux,” its in-game currency, finding that he presented no evidence that he requested a refund or was denied one by Roblox.
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.