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
Pandora’s Virtual Try-On Tool Leads to BIPA Class Complaint - On November 15, 2022, a group of plaintiffs brought a purported class action against Pandora Jewelry LLC, claiming that its virtual try-on tool violates...more
On remand from the U.S. Supreme Court, the Ninth Circuit earlier this week again affirmed the lower court’s order preliminarily enjoining LinkedIn Corp. (“LinkedIn”) from blocking data analytics company hiQ Labs, Inc.’s...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
Last week, the Italian data protection authority (the “GPDP”) opened an investigation after reports that a dataset allegedly containing data compiled from 500 million LinkedIn profiles and other websites was available for...more
Family law blogs are usually not fertile grounds to write about criminal law. Yet even family lawyers are not immune from situations where our specialty crosses paths with the dark side. We have previously written about...more
UNITED STATES - Regulatory—Policy, Best Practices, and Standards - Cybersecurity Standards Issued for Government Contractors - On January 31, the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and...more
In continuing its push to enforce its terms and policies against developers that engage in unauthorized collection or scraping of user data, Facebook brought suit last month against mobile marketing and data analytics firm...more
Last month, LinkedIn Corp. (“LinkedIn”) filed a petition for rehearing en banc of the Ninth Circuit’s blockbuster decision in hiQ Labs, Inc. v. LinkedIn Corp., No. 17-16783 (9th Cir. Sept. 9, 2019). The crucial question...more
Data scraping is a technique by which automated tools are used to extract data from a website and format the data for analysis. Many companies mine website users’ publicly accessible data in order to tailor products and...more
On October 11, 2019, LinkedIn Corp. (“LinkedIn”) filed a petition for rehearing en banc of the Ninth Circuit’s blockbuster decision in hiQ Labs, Inc. v. LinkedIn Corp., No. 17-16783 (9th Cir. Sept. 9, 2019). The crucial...more
Facebook announced on September, 20th, that it has suspended tens of thousands of apps from interoperating with the Facebook platform alleging misuse of Facebook members’ personal data. This is a continuation of the Cambridge...more
In a ruling that is being hailed as a victory for web scrapers and the open nature of publicly available website data, the Ninth Circuit today issued its long-awaited opinion in hiQ Labs, Inc. v. LinkedIn Corp., No. 17-16783...more
Continuing our annual tradition, we present the top developments and headlines for 2017 and what we expect in 2018 in trade secret, computer fraud, and non-compete law....more
Continuing our annual tradition, we present the top developments/headlines for 2017/2018 in trade secret, computer fraud, and non-compete law....more
Earlier this month, the Ninth Circuit issued a noteworthy ruling in a dispute between an enterprise software licensor and a third-party support provider. The case is particularly important as it addresses the common practice...more
Last week, an unknown Twitter contractor briefly suspended President Trump’s Twitter account. The episode lasted 11 minutes. On its face, it may seem like a relatively small matter, but existing law could make a federal case...more
This past week, the Supreme Court denied the petitions for certiorari in two noteworthy Ninth Circuit decisions that had interpreted the scope of liability under the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) in the context...more
Question: I know my spouse’s passwords to their social media accounts, bank accounts and/or email accounts, can I log into their account and get the information we need to help win my case? ...more
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (“EFF”) and the American Civil Liberties Union (“ACLU”) have weighed in on Facebook’s high-profile dispute with a social media aggregation company over whether it had unlawfully accessed...more
In July, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued two decisions by which it intends to clarify liability under the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1030 (“CFAA”). The CFAA imposes criminal penalties and...more
We have written before about website operators’ use of the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) to combat data scraping. We have also noted a number of recent cases in which courts held that social media platforms,...more
Instagram now allows celebrities to block trolls. The rest of us will have to continue trying to ignore Instagram trolls. While Facebook reached new highs last quarter, Twitter continued to stumble. Will adding more live...more
The UK wants to use the blockchain to track the spending of welfare recipients. Some believe that a recent Ninth Circuit holding could turn sharing passwords into a federal crime under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act....more
Throughout 2015, Seyfarth Shaw’s dedicated Trade Secrets, Computer Fraud & Non-Competes Practice Group hosted a series of CLE webinars that addressed significant issues facing clients today in this important and ever-changing...more