On September 19, 2022, a Massachusetts federal District Court denied Boston Globe Media Partners LLC’s motion to dismiss a consumer class action suit against it. This case is one of 47 proposed class actions filed since February 2022 against various companies, each based on a company’s use of Meta’s Pixel tracking tool.
Boston Globe Media Partners is a “multimedia organization that provides news, entertainment, and commentary across multiple brands and platforms”;… More
Four months after the GDPR came into effect, the French Data Protection Authority (“CNIL“) published a first assessment with some impressive figures:
On Friday, May 25, the day when GDPR became effective, noyb.eu (None of Your Business), the non-profit privacy organization recently set up by Max Schrems, filed the first complaints based on GDPR.
Max Schrems is the Austrian privacy lawyer who had complained about the transfer of his data to the United States by Facebook: he argued that, in light of the Snowden revelations,… More
The litigation over Facebook’s Tag Suggestions feature in the United State District Court for the Northern District of California continues, with the court this week denying both sides’ bids for summary judgment in a ten-page order. The case, formerly captioned Patel v. Facebook and now going by the name of In re Facebook Biometric Information Privacy Litigation, is on course to proceed to trial in July.… More
In a recent ten-page order, a federal judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California declined to dismiss a lawsuit against Facebook alleging that Facebook’s “Tag Suggestions” feature violates the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA). The ruling means that the case, Patel v. Facebook, Inc., Civil Action No. 3:15-cv-03747-JD, will proceed, but the long-term impact of the ruling is less clear.… More
Recently, Austrian privacy activist Maximilian Schrems won a partial victory in his continuing battles with Facebook. We discuss that case below. But first, we review his prior tilts with Facebook.
Schrems in Ireland’s Courts
When Schrems was a college student, he heard a Facebook representative at a conference talk about European privacy rules with a lack of consideration that shocked him. Since then, Schrems has been fighting Facebook on many fronts.… More
The current challenge to Facebook’s privacy practices in Ireland (“Schrems II”) may be coming to a head. You will recall that in Schrems I, the challenge to Facebook’s privacy practices led to a decision issued by the European Court of Justice that invalidated the US-EU Safe Harbor. Following the invalidation of the Safe Harbor, Facebook switched to the Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses (SCC) and the Schrems complaint was reformulated to challenge the SCC.… More
As all aspects of business inexorably shift toward online, it is not surprising that intellectual property infringement, cybersquatting, and related internet abuses abound. Luckily, there are various procedures available by which aggrieved companies can seek relief short of litigation.
Foley Hoag will present a 60-minute webinar on Thursday, March 16 at 12:30 pm EDT offering guidance for in-house counsel regarding internet takedowns and domain name disputes,… More
After the European Court of Justice invalidated Safe Harbor on October 6, 2015, the Article 29 Working Party announced in an October 16, 2015 statement that US companies that were Safe Harbor certified had until the end of January 2016 to find alternative means to transfer data to the US and, if they failed to do so, EU Data Protection Authorities would pursue enforcement measures.… More
In Case You Missed It: US and EU officials signed on to the so-called “Privacy Umbrella” deal last week. The agreement is designed to protect the personal data of EU citizens when it is transferred to the US for law enforcement purposes — a sort of criminal counterpart to the sturdier-sounding Privacy Shield we discussed here last Thursday. And, like the Shield, the Umbrella has drawn its share of critics,… More