Technology

Plaintiffs’ lawyers have continued to bring privacy claims targeting businesses that use vendors to help provide beneficial chat features on their website, as we last reported here.  Late last year, a Southern District of California judge dismissed another set of privacy claims challenging the routine use of these vendor services by Tonal, a popular smart home gym company named as the sole defendant in the lawsuit.  Jones v. Tonal Systems, Inc., 751 F. Supp. 3d 1025 (S.D. Cal. 2024).

Plaintiff Julie Jones, a California resident, claimed that she had visited Tonal’s website and used its chat feature to communicate with a Tonal customer service representative.  This chat feature allegedly incorporated an API run by another company to create and store transcripts of website visitors’ chats with Tonal’s customer service representatives.  According to the complaint, this alleged conduct constituted wiretapping, which Tonal purportedly aided and abetted in violation of Sections 631 and 632.7 of the California Invasion of Privacy Act (“CIPA”).  Plaintiff also asserted other privacy claims based on the same alleged conduct, including the California Unfair Competition Law (“UCL”) and the California Constitution’s right to privacy provision.

The Court granted Tonal’s motion to dismiss each of plaintiff’s claims on multiple grounds.Continue Reading Another California Court Rejects Privacy Claims Targeting Online Chat Feature

Early this month, a Northern District of California judge dismissed, with prejudice, a putative class action complaint asserting five privacy-related causes of action, concluding the “issue of consent defeat[ed] all of Plaintiffs’ claims.”  Lakes v. Ubisoft, Inc., –F. Supp. 3d–, 2025 WL 1036639 (N.D. Cal. Apr. 2, 2025).  Specifically, the Court dismissed plaintiffs’ claims under the (1) Video Privacy Protection Act (“VPPA”); (2) Federal Wiretap Act; (3) California Invasion of Privacy Act (“CIPA”) § 631; (4) common law invasion of privacy; and (5) Article I, Section 1 of the California Constitution. Continue Reading California Court Holds Plaintiffs’ Consent Defeats Claims Involving Use of Website Pixel

Court decisions addressing “pen register” claims brought under the California Invasion of Privacy Act (“CIPA”) have started trickling in after last year saw an uptick in these claims targeting businesses’ use of website tools.  Two more California courts recently joined a growing trend dismissing pen register claims, but they did so on new grounds: one confirmed that CIPA’s pen register provision was not intended to cover “internet communications,” and another held that a website tool that allegedly collected “identifying information about visitors’ devices, from visitors’ devices” does not constitute a “pen register” or “trap and trace device.”  See Aviles v. Liveramp, Inc., 2025 WL 487196 (Cal. Super. Jan. 28, 2025); Sanchez v. Cars.com Inc., 2025 WL 487194 (Cal. Super. Jan. 27, 2025).Continue Reading Courts Hold CIPA’s Pen Register Provision Does Not Apply to Internet Communications or to Alleged Data Collection “About Visitors’ Devices, From Visitors’ Devices”

A fan of celebrity LL Cool J filed a wiretapping suit against Community.com (“Community”), claiming that Community accessed her text message to LL Cool J in violation of the federal Wiretap Act and the California Invasion of Privacy Act (“CIPA”).  In an unpublished opinion highlighting that Section 632 of CIPA does not protect communications that are by nature a recorded medium, the Ninth Circuit affirmed dismissal of the plaintiff’s claims. See Boulton v. Community.com, Inc., No. 23-3145, 2025 WL 314813 (9th Cir. Jan. 28, 2025).Continue Reading Ninth Circuit Affirms Dismissal of CIPA and Wiretap Act Claims Against Celebrity Platform

Last month, a New Jersey federal judge applied Third Circuit precedent to hold that the California Invasion of Privacy Act (“CIPA”) does not impose liability for commonplace use of website marketing/analytics pixels under the well-established party exception.  Cole v. Quest Diagnostics, Inc., 2025 WL 88703 (D.N.J. Jan. 14, 2025).Continue Reading New Jersey Court Applies CIPA’s Party Exception to Pixel Wiretap Complaint

After removing a lawsuit brought against it in Pennsylvania state court under the Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance Control Act (“WESCA”) to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Prime Hydration LLC argued in its motion to dismiss that the plaintiff lacked Article III standing.  Judge Nitza I. Quiñones Alejandro agreed and remanded the case to state court.  Heaven v. Prime Hydration LLC, 2025 WL 42964, at *7 (E.D. Pa. Jan. 7, 2025).

Plaintiff Shantay Heaven filed a putative class action in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas asserting that Prime Hydration allowed third parties to track the activity of visitors to Prime Hydration’s website.  Id. at *1.  Plaintiff asserted that Prime Hydration integrated the third-party pixels into its website.  Id. at *2.  Those two pieces of code, Plaintiff alleged, allowed Prime Hydration to capture “her searches for drink flavors, . . . and that this information was transmitted to” the third-party servers.  Id. at *6.Continue Reading Pennsylvania District Court Judge Remands Case After Finding No Article III Standing to Bring Wiretapping Claim

A court in the Northern District of California recently granted summary judgment to DDR Media LLC and Jornaya in a website wiretapping lawsuit under the California Invasion of Privacy Act (“CIPA”).  See Williams v. DDR Media, LLC, 2024 WL 4859078 (N.D. Cal. Nov. 20, 2024).  This decision represents a meaningful victory for defendants facing similar wiretapping claims.Continue Reading California Federal Court Grants Summary Judgment to CIPA Defendants

Dozens of lawsuits have started challenging businesses’ use of website tools to collect IP addresses under the “pen register” and “trap and trace device” provision of the California Invasion of Privacy Act (“CIPA”).  As we reported last month, a California court dismissed one of these lawsuits because of a…

Continue Reading Another California Court Holds CIPA’s Pen Register Provision Does Not Prohibit the Collection of IP Addresses

Websites cannot load without the transmission of an IP address, which tells websites where to deliver the webpages displayed on a user’s browser.  Yet a number of lawsuits have started challenging this routine transmission of IP addresses under a lesser-known provision of the California Invasion of Privacy Act (“CIPA”) that…

Continue Reading Court Holds CIPA’s Pen Register Provision Does Not Impose Liability for “What Makes the Internet Possible.”

On Wednesday, November 13, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in the case NVIDIA Corp. v. Ohman J, a class action suit filed in the Northern District of California alleging securities fraud under § 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and SEC Rule 10b-5.  Early signals from the Justices’ questions have led observers to believe that the Court may affirm the Ninth Circuit’s decision to reverse and remand the decision granting Nvidia’s motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim. Continue Reading Supreme Court Expresses Skepticism Regarding Nvidia’s Motion to Dismiss Securities Class Action