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Mealey's Cyber Tech & E-Commerce

  • March 27, 2020

    Communications Decency Act Bars Terror-Aiding Claims, Facebook Tells Supreme Court

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — Opposing a petition for certiorari by the family members of terror attack victims, Facebook Inc. filed a brief in the U.S. Supreme Court on March 24, arguing that claims that it aided terrorists via their use of its social network were properly dismissed as barred by the Communications Decency Act (CDA) (Stuart Force, et al. v. Facebook Inc., No. 19-859, U.S. Sup.).

  • March 27, 2020

    Google Wins Dismissal Of Willful Infringement Counterclaim In California

    SAN FRANCISCO — Allegations that Google LLC willfully infringed a patent covering a portable QWERTY keyboard were dismissed March 26 by a federal judge in California, but the patent owner was granted leave to amend (Google LLC v. Princeps Secundus LLC, No. 19-6566, N.D. Calif., 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 52753).

  • March 27, 2020

    Facebook To Supreme Court:  Certiorari Not Merited In Online Jurisdiction Dispute

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Alabama Supreme Court correctly found jurisdiction lacking in a lawsuit over a page that Facebook Inc. declined to take down, the social network said in a March 23 brief opposing a petition for certiorari by the woman who requested the page’s takedown, with the respondent asserting that it did not have any suit-related contacts with Alabama (K.G.S. v. Facebook Inc., No. 19-910, U.S. Sup.).

  • March 24, 2020

    Split 2nd Circuit Denies Trump Rehearing In Twitter 1st Amendment Suit

    NEW YORK — A majority of Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals judges on March 23 voted to deny a petition for rehearing by President Donald J. Trump of a panel ruling that found that the president violated the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution by blocking certain Twitter users from responding to his tweets, which the panel held constituted viewpoint discrimination on a public forum (Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, et al. v. Donald J. Trump, et al., No. 18-1691, 2nd Cir., 2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 9025).

  • March 23, 2020

    Panel Remands For An Order To Grant Anti-SLAPP Motion In Suit Over CBD Article

    SAN DIEGO — A California appeals panel on March 20 held that a lower court erred in finding that plaintiffs have demonstrated a probability of prevailing on the merits of their libel, false light and unfair competition claims arising from the publication of an article regarding the safety of a cannabidiol (CBD) product, reversing and remanding with directions to enter an order granting the defendants' motion to strike these three claims under California’s strategic lawsuit against public participation (anti-SLAPP) statute (Medical Marijuana, Inc., et al. v. ProjectCBD.com, et al., No D074755, Calif. App., 4th Dist., Div. 1, 2020 Cal. App. LEXIS 233).

  • March 20, 2020

    In New York Copyright Case, Magistrate OKs Contributory Infringement Claims

    NEW YORK — An artist won the right to amend her complaint on March 19, when a New York federal magistrate judge approved the addition of two defendants accused of contributory copyright infringement (Annamarie Trombetta v. Marie Novocin, et al., No. 18-993, S.D. N.Y., 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 47816).

  • March 18, 2020

    Lack Of Falsity, Scienter Leads To Dismissal Of Claims In NVIDIA Stock-Drop Suit

    OAKLAND, Calif. — A federal judge in California on March 16 ruled that although the lead plaintiffs in a securities class action lawsuit against graphics processing unit (GPU) manufacturer NVIDIA Corp. and certain of its senior executives have sufficiently pleaded loss causation in arguing that the defendants misrepresented the company’s revenues based on the sale of its gaming GPU to cryptocurrency miners in making their federal securities law claims, the lead plaintiffs failed to plead their claims with the required falsity or scienter (Iron Workers Local 580 Joint Funds, et al. v. NVIDIA Corp., et al., No. 18-7669, N.D. Calif., 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 45259).

  • March 18, 2020

    Facebook, Former Employee Misappropriated AI Trade Secrets, Tech Start-Up Says

    BOSTON — A technology company’s former employee breached the terms of his employment agreements by providing the company’s proprietary set of algorithms used in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) to Facebook Inc. in violation of state and federal trade secret laws, the company alleges in a March 4 complaint filed in Massachusetts federal court (Neural Magic Inc. v. Facebook Inc., et al., No. 20-10444, D. Mass.).

  • March 18, 2020

    9th Circuit Affirms Toss Of Conservative Group’s YouTube 1st Amendment Suit

    SEATTLE — Concluding that YouTube LLC is a private entity, despite its size and ubiquity, a Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel on Feb. 26 upheld the dismissal of a conservative organization’s claims that the video-hosting platform’s censoring of its videos violated the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution because it is not a state actor (Prager University v. Google LLC, et al., No. 18-15712, 9th Cir., 2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 5903).

  • March 06, 2020

    COMMENTARY: Email Phishing Scams And Computer Fraud Coverage: Causation Is Key

    By Karen Cestari and Bryce Friedman

  • March 17, 2020

    Facebook Files Notice Of Settlement Of Content Moderators’ PTSD Class Claims

    TAMPA, Fla. — The day after a putative class of content moderators moved in Florida federal court for discovery of settlement details in a similar unsafe workplace suit against Facebook Inc., the social network on March 16 filed a notice confirming a proposed settlement in the other case in which moderators purportedly experienced post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from viewing violent and disturbing content, while expressing reluctance to reveal nonfinalized details prior to the filing of a pending preliminary approval motion (Debrynna Garrett, et al. v. Facebook Inc., et al., No. 8:20-cv-00585, M.D. Fla.).

  • March 17, 2020

    Sugar Daddy Site Owner Must Supplement Jurisdictional Discovery In Trademark Row

    SANTA ANA, Calif. — Granting a dating website operator’s motion to compel, a California federal magistrate judge on March 11 found that a Cyprus-based defendant that allegedly engaged in trademark infringement did not provide sufficient declarations and explanation in its responses to discovery requests related to establishing U.S. jurisdiction over the purported competing “sugar daddy” site operator (Reflex Media Inc., et al. v. Apiriliaco Ltd., et al., No. 8:16-cv-00795, C.D.  Calif.).

  • March 16, 2020

    LinkedIn Asks High Court To Decide If CFAA Protects Public-Facing Websites’ Data

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a March 9 petition for certiorari, LinkedIn Corp. asks the U.S. Supreme Court to decide “a question of fundamental importance” as to whether a public-facing website can claim the unauthorized access protections of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) against companies that employ data collection methods such as scrapers and bots (LinkedIn Corp. v. hiQ Labs Inc., No. 19-1116, U.S. Sup.).

  • March 16, 2020

    Government Seeks Remand To DOD Of Amazon’s Protest Over JEDI Contract Award

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — One month after a U.S. Court of Federal Claims judge enjoined the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) and Microsoft Corp. from proceeding with any activities related to the multibillion-dollar Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) program, pending resolution of a protest by Amazon Web Services Inc. over the awarding of the contract, the U.S. government filed a motion on March 12 seeking to remand the matter to the DOD for reconsideration of “certain aspects of the challenged agency decision” (Amazon Web Services Inc. v. United States, No. 1:19-cv-01796, Fed. Clms.).

  • March 13, 2020

    Google Insists Java Code Use Was Fair Use In Supreme Court Copyright Suit

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — With oral arguments approaching in its long-running copyright infringement dispute with Oracle America Inc. over its use of certain Java code elements, Google LLC filed a reply brief in the U.S. Supreme Court on March 11, maintaining that its utilization of Java interfaces was permissible fair use under the Copyright Act (Google LLC v. Oracle America Inc., No. 18-956, U.S. Sup.).

  • March 13, 2020

    Media Streaming Patent Should Be Canceled As Obvious, Petitioners Say

    ALEXANDRIA, Va. — A claimed process for automatically generating top-level index files for use in adaptive bitrate streaming is obvious to a person of skill in the art, two popular streaming services assert in a March 11 petition for inter partes review (IPR) (Netflix Inc., et al. v. Divx LLC, No. IPR2020-00648, PTAB).

  • March 13, 2020

    Rimini Defends Attorney-Client Privilege In Post-Injunction Discovery To Oracle

    LAS VEGAS — A Nevada federal magistrate judge correctly found that certain technical documents that it declined to produce in post-injunction discovery to Oracle USA Inc. were protected by attorney-client privilege, Rimini Street Inc. says in a Feb. 26 brief, arguing that the communications with its counsel were for the purpose of ensuring that it did not violate the injunction in the decade-old software copyright infringement suit (Oracle USA Inc., et al. v. Rimini Street Inc., et al., No. 2:10-cv-00106, D. Nev.).

  • March 11, 2020

    Snap Stands By Claim Blackberry Patent Is Obvious In Petitioner Reply

    ALEXANDRIA, Va. — A filing by Snap Inc. on March 10 with the Patent Trial and Appeal Board asserts that Blackberry Ltd., in defending its patented technology, imports “unsupported limitations” and “mischaracterizes” the teachings of prior art, in a testament to the “weakness” of Blackberry’s “substantive positions” (Snap Inc. v. Blackberry Ltd., No. IPR2019-00715, PTAB).

  • March 11, 2020

    Attorney-Client, Marital Privilege Assertions Overruled In Bitcoin Ownership Row

    WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — The defendant in a dispute over the ownership of billions of dollars’ worth of bitcoin assets must produce 11,000 documents that he has withheld from discovery, a Florida federal magistrate judge ruled March 9, overruling the defendant’s objections under the marital and attorney-client privileges (Ira Kleiman, et al. v. Craig Wright, No. 9:18-cv-80176, S.D. Fla., 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 40195).

  • March 09, 2020

    Bitcoin Dispute Defendant Opposes Letter Rogatory On British Blockchain Firm

    WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — A request by the plaintiffs in a bitcoin ownership dispute to serve a letter rogatory on a nonparty British blockchain company “is untimely and prejudicial,” the defendant bitcoin mogul tells a Florida federal court in a March 6 opposition brief, noting that the discovery cutoff date is “a mere month and a half away” (Ira Kleiman, et al. v. Craig Wright, No. 9:18-cv-80176, S.D. Fla.).