On August 28, 2023, two photographers filed a petition for rehearing en banc, urging the Ninth Circuit to reconsider its recent decision in Hunley v. Instagram, which held that Instagram could not be held liable for secondary...more
The case of Popa v. Harriet Carter Gifts, Inc. “began with a quest for pet stairs.” Plaintiff Ashley Popa searched Harriet Carter Gifts’ website, added pet stairs to her cart, but never completed the purchase. During her...more
The disposal of hardware in the wrong manner can leave an organization offside its regulatory obligations under privacy legislation. Depending on the residence of the individuals or entities whose personal data is stored by...more
Wilson Sonsini provides extensive and cutting-edge legal services for innovators, technology pioneers, and disruptors. As part of our focus on emerging technologies, our attorneys are publishing a series on applying and...more
In a recent case, Bell v. Wilmott Storage Services, LLC, decided September 9, 2021, the Ninth Circuit clarified the role that the de minimis concept plays in copyright infringement cases. In essence, the Ninth Circuit...more
Judge Jed Rakoff of the Southern District of New York recently denied a motion to dismiss in a copyright dispute involving the unlicensed “embedding” of a social media video. In doing so, the court explicitly and definitively...more
On July 30, 2021, a New York district court declined to dismiss copyright infringement claims with respect to an online article that included an “embedded” video (i.e., shown via a link to a video hosted on another site). ...more
I love seeing another win for law enforcement in the cyber context. Servers and web domains owned by DoubleVPN, a virtual private network, were seized recently following a collaborative law enforcement effort involving the...more
It has become commonplace for companies such as Google to use local servers to provide faster service to customers. This practice has raised the question as to whether those local servers constitute “a regular and...more
On February 13, 2020, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed the Eastern District of Texas’ ruling that venue was proper in In re Google, 2019-126, halting for now the line of precedent finding that...more
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit elected not to decide en banc whether servers or similar equipment in third-party facilities constitute a regular and established place of business under the patent venue...more
Under the patent venue statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1400(b), a patent suit may be brought in a “judicial district where the defendant resides, or where the defendant has committed acts of infringement and has a regular and...more
The District Court for the Eastern District of Texas has denied Google’s motion to dismiss or transfer the patent infringement case SEVEN Networks v. Google for improper venue, finding that Google’s servers housed by...more
In our continued post-TC Heartland coverage, Judge Gilstrap in the Eastern District of Texas recently held that venue was proper because Google exercises exclusive control over physical servers implicated by the litigation,...more
The Southern District of New York has teed up an important copyright issue for interlocutory appeal, which could create a circuit split with the Ninth Circuit’s 2006 decision in Perfect 10, Inc. v. Amazon.com, Inc. On March...more
Global Equity Management (SA) Pty. Ltd. (“GEMSA”), a foreign non-practicing entity (“NPE”) organized under the laws of Australia, filed almost 40 patent lawsuits in five batches in 2015 and 2016. The majority of these...more
Apple’s iTunes and Disney’s DisneyLife websites have reportedly become early targets of China’s internet regulators who are beginning to enforce new rules restricting the publication of online content. The new rules, the...more
On September 9, 2015, the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Communications (the “Roskomnadzor”) reported on its website that it blocked an extensive online database of more...more