The ‘Long Arm’ of CIPA and Its Newfound Pen-Trap Claims
Welcome to the Summer of Privacy! As we hit the middle of 2025, California is once again the focus of our attention, as both its legislators and regulators are attempting to square privacy protections with developing...more
Websites are ubiquitous, and so are cookies and tracking pixels (a/k/a web beacons). A web browser uses cookies to store login details and preferences; the cookies also track and profile user behavior. When visiting a...more
A California bill aimed at curbing the explosion of lawsuits filed against businesses using common website tools like cookies, pixels, and session replay software has stalled out in the 2025 legislative session, meaning your...more
The Ninth Circuit recently issued two back-to-back memoranda of dispositions addressing claims under the California Invasion of Privacy Act (“CIPA”) Section 631 and the common law tort of intrusion upon seclusion. First, on...more
In a significant win for the defense, a California federal judge denied class certification in a California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA) suit alleging that AddShoppers and Peet’s Coffee unlawfully tracked website visitors...more
Readers of this blog are aware of the barrage of California Invasion of Privacy (“CIPA”) claims brought against online companies. Recently, an unfavorable decision from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (“Ninth Circuit”)...more
In Mikulsky v. Bloomingdale’s (June 2025), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed the dismissal of a California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA) class action, holding that the plaintiff sufficiently alleged...more
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has issued a pivotal ruling that is likely to reshape privacy litigation for e-commerce platforms. In Briskin v. Shopify, Inc., the Court held that Shopify, despite being...more
It’s 2025, and somehow, we’re still dealing with lawsuits over a law that was born in the pen registers and rotary phones era. That law, the California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA), a decades-old statute that’s suddenly...more
On June 3, 2025, the California Senate unanimously passed Senate Bill 690 (SB 690), a bill that seeks to add a “commercial business purposes” exception to the California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA)....more
This week, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled in favor of children’s clothing retailer Janie & Jack, which sought to enjoin over 2,400 individual arbitration claims resulting from alleged...more
California Senate Bill 690 (SB 690), introduced by Senator Anna Caballero, is continuing to proceed through the California state legislative process. The proposed bill would amend the California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA)...more
On April 29, 2025, the Senate Public Safety Committee voted 6-0 to advance legislation that would exempt processing of personal information for a commercial business purpose from coverage by the California Invasion of Privacy...more
Businesses just received some good news when a federal court dismissed a California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA) claim that aimed to expand the reach of the state’s wiretapping law to cover internet communications. The...more
Keypoint: In this post: (1) California considers a “commercial exception” to wiretapping and pen registry laws; (2) a rise in federal wiretapping claims against websites; (3) more courts impose “knowledge or intent”...more
The California Invasion of Privacy Act continues to be a focal point for privacy litigation, particularly concerning website tracking practices. A recent case, Gabrielli v. Insider Inc. sheds new light on whether collecting...more
Privacy litigation has taken California (and the country) by storm. In the past twenty-four months, the focus of privacy litigation has shifted from data breaches to data use, and the number of class actions filed grows by...more
Keypoint: In this post: (1) How a privacy policy can defeat a plaintiff’s “delayed discovery” argument; (2) Two CA state courts reject plaintiffs’ allegations concerning personal jurisdiction; (3) Three courts dismiss PR/TT...more
On February 18, 2025, US District Judge Edgardo Ramos of the United States District Court of the Southern District of New York granted the defendant’s motion to dismiss against a plaintiff bringing claims under California...more
The deluge of lawsuits and demand letters under the California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA) has prompted courts to scrutinize CIPA claims more rigorously, including the threshold question of whether CIPA plaintiffs have...more
Beware of demand letters from plaintiffs’ attorneys for allegations of illegal use of pen registers, trap and trace pixels, and search bar pixels—why? This “trap and trace” litigation is a growing trend for plaintiffs’...more
As the debate simmers about the proper application of the wiretapping provisions of the California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA), courts continue to weigh in on what technologies may constitute improper third-party...more
Welcome to the twentieth installment in our monthly data privacy litigation report. We prepare these reports to provide updates on how courts in the United States have handled emerging data privacy trends. After our expansive...more
Two recent court decisions have provided businesses with long-awaited clarity on the reach of the California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA) – and could begin to redefine digital privacy litigation for the better. Two separate...more
A California federal district court recently granted class certification in a lawsuit against a financial services company. The case involves allegations that the company’s website used third-party technology to track users’...more