Filed under the title of creative lawyering, a putative class action case has been filed against Facebook in federal court in Northern California alleging that health care providers and medical organizations have violated HIPAA by allowing Facebook to access user data from searches on the medical providers’ websites.

The plaintiffs allege that when they visit a medical website, like cancer.org, to search for information about a specific type of cancer, the website transfers the user’s search to Facebook . They further allege that Facebook then uses the information to sell marketing opportunities to third parties.

While creative, we expect Facebook to move to dismiss the case quickly.