Cyberside Chats: Everyone wants to be Batman. Hacking Back & Cybersecurity Law
Looking back at 2021 and ahead to 2022
Monthly Minute | Protecting Against Data Scrapers
Death of Activist Aaron Swartz Could Spur Changes to Computer Fraud & Abuse Act
Employer’s Takeover of Former CEO’s LinkedIn Account Lawful Under CFAA
On January 23, 2024, the court in Meta Platforms Inc. v. Bright Data Ltd., Case No. 3:23-cv-00077-EMC (N.D. Cal.), issued a summary judgment ruling with potentially wide-ranging ramifications for the law of scraping and...more
Last month, Vital Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (“Vital”), the manufacturer of the Bang energy drink, fell short in its post-trial challenge to a “monster” jury award in favor of Monster Energy Company (“Monster”). ...more
Summary - A class action lawsuit filed against OpenAI and its primary investor, Microsoft, seeks damages and injunctive relief for the alleged theft and commercial misappropriation of consumer personal data processed by and...more
Following up on our April 27, 2022 post, Data Scraping Deemed Legal in Certain Circumstances, the most significant data scraping lawsuit has finally come to an end. After six years of litigation, LinkedIn Corp. and hiQ Labs,...more
UPDATE: On December 8, 2022, the court issued an order granting the Consent Judgment and Permanent Injunction. On December 6, 2022, the parties in the long-running litigation between now-defunct data analytics company hiQ...more
On November 15, 2022, a California district court declined to dismiss a declaratory judgment action brought by a data scraper, 3taps, Inc. (“3taps”), against LinkedIn Corp. (“LinkedIn”). (3taps, Inc. v. LinkedIn Corp., No....more
Earlier this month, the US District Court for District of Maryland denied a partial motion for summary judgment in a case filed by Infotek Corporation against Mr. Dwight Preston, a former employee. See Infotek Corp v....more
Background - The issue of fraudulent crypto-related mobile apps has received much attention of late. Back in July 2022, the FBI issued a notice, warning financial institutions and investors about instances where criminals...more
World events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, have accelerated the need for business operations to grow more digitally reliant and driven. As the global network grows and becomes more interconnected, privacy and...more
The Department of Justice recently announced a revision of its policy concerning charging violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (the “CFAA”). Following recent decision from the Supreme Court and appellate courts that...more
On May 19, 2022, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that it had revised its policy regarding prosecution under the federal anti-hacking statute, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). Since the DOJ last made changes...more
In a significant development in anti-hacking criminal enforcement, the Department of Justice last week released new guidance for charging violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (“CFAA”), the nation’s premier computer...more
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled in HiQ Labs, Inc. v. LinkedIn that automated web scraping of publicly accessible websites does not violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), even if the website owner...more
The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, applying California law, has held that a loss resulting from an employee’s payments made to a third party after receiving fraudulent emails directing her to wire funds...more
When can a data breach get worse? When the process of notifying victims creates a second breach. Take the example of a cancer treatment center that recently paid $425,000 to settle allegations that included a faulty...more
For years, website owners have leveraged the federal Computer Fraud & Abuse Act (CFAA) as a tool to combat unauthorized scraping of data and other content from their websites. Due to a circuit court split on the...more
It’s hard to keep up with all the recent changes to labor and employment law. While the law always seems to evolve at a rapid pace, there have been an unprecedented number of changes for the past few years—and this past month...more
Seeking to resolve a split among the Circuits “regarding the scope of liability under the [Computer Fraud and Abuse Act]’s “exceeds authorized access” clause, the Supreme Court granted certiorari to the appeal of Robert Van...more
On June 14, 2021, in a closely-watched dispute involving the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), the Supreme Court granted LinkedIn Corp.’s (“LinkedIn”) petition for certiorari filed in the hiQ web scraping case. It...more
In a long-awaited decision, the Supreme Court resolved a circuit split about whether an individual with access to a computer system violates the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (“CFAA”) by accessing information for an improper...more
In Van Buren v. United States, the Supreme Court faced the difficult task of determining whether the opaquely-written Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (“CFAA”) would apply to situations in which a person who was authorized to...more
The federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 (CFAA) put into place criminal and civil remedies to counter what was then the new phenomenon of computer hacking. While directed toward outside agents, over the years...more
A recent ruling in Parziale v. HP, Inc., arising out of the implementation by Hewlett-Packard (“HP”) of a remote firmware update on many models of the company’s printers, highlights the potentially broad application of the...more
A trade secret is any information used in one's business that derives independent economic value from being kept secret. Unlike patents, trade secrets are protected indefinitely for as long as they remain a secret. In the...more
Supreme Court decisions are often the most challenging pieces of legal guidance to understand. They are rarely straightforward and usually contain so much analysis that it becomes hard to get to the bottom of what was...more