Trump Campaign Sues New York Times in Libel Suit Over Opinion Piece on Russia Posted on March 09, 2020 Complaint, Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. v. New York Times, Co. (N.Y. Sup. Ct. Feb. 26, 2020) (No. 152099/2020). On February 26, 2020, President Trump’s re-election campaign filed a defamation suit against The New York Times over an opinion piece by Max Frankel, headlined “The Real Trump-Russia Quid Pro Quo.” The piece claims that the Trump campaign had an...
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Chooseco v. Netflix: Who Will Get to Choose Their Own Adventure? Posted on February 26, 2020 Chooseco LLC v. Netflix, Inc., No. 2:19-cv-08 (D. Vt. Feb. 11, 2020). Netflix recently was denied its motion to dismiss a lawsuit over its Black Mirror episode Bandersnatch. Chooseco—the company that owns the trademark rights to the children’s book series Choose Your Own Adventure—sued Netflix in January 2019 for trademark infringement, trademark dilution, and unfair competition. Unlike other episodes of...
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Clearview AI Responds to Cease-and-Desist Letters by Claiming First Amendment Right to Publicly Available Data Posted on February 25, 2020 In an interview with CBS This Morning, Hoan Ton-That, the CEO and founder of Clearview AI, argued that the company has a First Amendment right to access and scrape publicly available information. The start-up has scraped more than three billion photos from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other websites for its app that uses facial recognition technology to identify people in...
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Federal Agencies Track Immigrants at the Border Using Purchased Cell Phone Data Posted on February 24, 2020 Earlier this month, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) has been purchasing access to the location data of millions of cell phones in America since 2017. This information has been used detect and later arrest undocumented immigrants who may be entering the United States illegally. In one case, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”)...
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Patel v. Facebook: Facebook Settles Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (“BIPA”) Violation Suit Posted on February 14, 2020 Patel, et al. v. Facebook, Inc., No. 3:15-cv-03747-JD (N.D. Cal. Aug. 8, 2019), hosted by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC). Facebook announced that it will pay $550 million to settle Patel v. Facebook, a class-action suit alleging that Facebook’s facial recognition technology violates the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (“BIPA”), 740 Ill. Comp.Stat. 14/5(e). This record-breaking payout far exceeds...
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New York State Senator Introduces “Social Media Hate Speech Accountability Act” Posted on February 12, 2020 S.B. 7275, 2019–20 Leg. Sess. (N.Y. 2020) On January 15, 2020, New York State Senator David Carlucci (D) introduced Senate Bill 7275, titled the “Social Media Hate Speech Accountability Act.” The bill seeks to amend New York’s general business law to include a definition of hate speech and require social media platforms to create a “transparent procedure” for its timely...
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Controlling Drug Prices: Bloomberg Proposes to Limit Evergreening Posted on February 11, 2020 Drug Prices, Mike Bloomberg 2020 (last visited Feb. 10, 2020). Drug prices continue to climb faster than any other form of healthcare spending. In the first half of 2019, the prices of 3,400 drugs rose, on average, 5 times the rate of inflation. To combat the problem, Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg has honed in on the pharmaceutical industry’s patent...
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Alasaad v. McAleenan: Federal District Court Rules Suspicionless Searches of Smart Phones at U.S. Ports of Entry Unconstitutional Posted on January 05, 2020 Alasaad v. McAleenan, No. 17-cv-11730-DJC (D. Mass Nov. 12, 2019). On November 12, 2019, Judge Casper of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts held that suspicionless searches of electronic devices at the border violate the Fourth Amendment, in what the ACLU is calling “a major victory for privacy rights.” The suit, Alasaad v. McAleenan, was filed by...
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Longoria v. San Benito: Texas High School Allowed to Remove Student from Cheerleading Team for “Inappropriate” Twitter Posts Posted on December 02, 2019 Zulema Longoria ex rel M.L. v. San Benito Independent Consolidate School District, No. 18-41060 (5th Cir. Nov. 4, 2019). Despite a district court’s ruling that a Texas high school student’s cheerleading coaches violated her First Amendment rights, the Fifth Circuit denied her appeal for relief based on the qualified immunity of the school officials. The student was removed from...
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TikTok Under Investigation for Posing a Threat to National Security—is Chinese Tech Running Out of Time in the U.S.? Posted on December 02, 2019 This past October, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (“CFIUS”) opened a national security review of TikTok and its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, over concerns about potential misuse of users' personal data. This investigation comes after petitions made by three Senators asking CFIUS to “conduct an assessment of the national security risks posed by TikTok and to...
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