This is a post by Sierra Falter. Sierra is a third-year law student at DePaul University College of Law in Chicago focusing on intellectual property law. You can reach her by email at sierrafalter [at] gmail dot com or follow her on Twitter (@lawsierra). Bio: www.sierrafalter.com.
In re Facebook Privacy Litigation, 2011 WL 2039995 (N.D.Cal. May 12, 2011)
Plaintiff Facebook users sued defendant Facebook for violation of California’s Unfair Competition Law (“UCL”), Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code §§ 17200, et seq., alleging that Facebook intentionally and knowingly transmitted personal information about plaintiffs to third-party advertisers without plaintiffs’ consent. Facebook moved to dismiss the UCL claim. The court granted the motion.
Defendant argued that plaintiffs failed to state a claim because they lacked standing under the UCL, since they did not allege they lost money or property. Defendant asserted there was no such loss because plaintiffs’ “personal information” did not constitute property under the UCL.
Instead, the plaintiffs had alleged that defendant unlawfully shared their “personally identifiable information” with third-party advertisers. However, the court distinguished the plaintiffs’ claim from Doe 1 v. AOL, LLC, 719 F.Supp.2d 1102 (N.D. Cal. 2010). In that case, the plaintiffs’ personal and financial information had been distributed to the public after the plaintiffs therein signed up and paid fees for AOL’s service. The court dismissed plaintiff’s claim in this case under the holding of Doe v. AOL — since plaintiffs alleged they received defendant’s services for free, they could not state a UCL claim.
June 3, 2011
Great job Sierra, thanks for taking the time to share this information.