The Federal Trade Commission intends to issue new rules to address fake reviews that would include a penalty of up to $50,120 per fake review. The FTC has issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPR) and there will be a sixty-day comment period once the rule is published in the Federal Register. The FTC cited…

On Wednesday, July 27, I will be presenting at the California Lawyers Association IP Section’s conference on IP and the Internet, on the topic of the FTC and Online Reviews. Participation is virtual. 2022 IP AND THE INTERNET JULY 27 @ 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM Schedule Link Registration Link

In April, the 9th Circuit again affirmed that scraping data from a public website did not by itself constitute a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (“CFAA”). HiQ Labs, Inc. v. LinkedIn Corporation, Case No. No. 17-16783 (9th Cir. April 18, 2022). See Ninth Circuit Again Holds Data Scraping From Public Websites Not…

In December 2020, Congress passed the Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act of 2020 (CASE Act), which directed the Copyright Office to establish the Copyright Claims Board (CCB). As explained by the Copyright Office, the CCB is a three-member tribunal within the Office that provides an “efficient and user-friendly option to resolve certain copyright disputes that…

In November 2020, California voters passed Proposition 24, the California Privacy Rights Act (“Prop 24”). The CPRA amends and extends the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (“CCPA”). To implement the law, the CPRA established the California Privacy Protection Agency (“Agency”) and vested it with the full administrative power, authority and jurisdiction to implement and…

House Energy & Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone (D-NJ), along with Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) the ranking Republican on the Committee, and Senator Roger Wicker (R-MS) who is the ranking Republican on the Senate Commerce Committee, released a discussion draft of the American Data Privacy and Protection Act which is a comprehensive national data…

The Federal Trade Commission’s Dot Com Disclosure guidelines, first issued in 2000 and updated in March 2013, have explained how to make consumer disclaimers on various digital platforms. The FTC has just announced that it is seeking to modernize the guidelines and its press release says it all – FTC Looks to Modernize Its Guidance…

In 2017, the federal district court for the Northern District of California enjoined LinkedIn from blocking workplace analytics company hiQ from its site, finding that data scraping from public-facing websites did not violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (“CFAA”). LinkedIn appealed and in 2020 the Ninth Circuit affirmed: [The CFAA’s] prohibition on accessing a…

Last year there were a number of reports of how women, women politicians, and women journalists were disproportionately targeted for abuse on online platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. See LA Times, The Hill Highlight Online Abuse of Women Politicians and Journalists. One of those reports was a Wilson Center report entitled Malign Creativity:…