Northern District of California

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California’s strict privacy laws, particularly the California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA), are fueling a surge in class action lawsuits against major companies over their use of online tracking technologies. In recent weeks, prominent brands including Estée Lauder, Nike, and Luxottica have been hit with proposed class actions in the Northern District of California, all…

A recent federal court decision in Adam v. CaringBridge, Inc., No.  25-cv-06042-WHO, 2025 WL 3493565 (N. Cal. Dec. 5, 2025), offers a cautionary tale for plaintiffs in privacy class actions, and a strategic playbook for defendants. Even where a case is properly filed in California (the home turf for many privacy statutes and plaintiffs)…

As platforms like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet have cemented themselves as the backbone of modern collaboration, a quiet revolution has unfolded in our meeting rooms, one where digital notetakers often outnumber the people actually present. Tools like fireflies.ai and Otter.ai promise the magic of effortless, automated meeting transcription. But as reliance on these…

A class action complaint filed in the Northern District of California on October 17, 2025, alleges that entertainment and arcade franchise Dave & Buster’s Entertainment Inc., misled website visitors about users’ ability to reject cookies and tracking technologies. The lawsuit, brought by two California residents, claims that the Dave & Buster’s website continued to place…

On October 9, 2025, the Northern District of California denied Mashable, Inc.’s motion to dismiss a class action alleging violations of the California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA). Mashable operates a digital news and entertainment website that publishes articles and multimedia content online. The plaintiff alleged that Mashable disclosed the IP addresses and device identifiers…

This post was co-authored by Mark Abou Naoum, Summer Associate. Mark is not admitted to practice law.

In December 2024, Jonathan Gabrielli filed several claims alleging that Motorola Mobility LLC (Motorola) misrepresented its data usage policy and shared his personal data with third parties, including Google, Amazon, and TikTok. Specifically, Gabrielli claims that a cookie…

On June 13, 2025, a federal court in the Northern District of California held that a putative Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA) class action lawsuit belonged in arbitration, thanks to the defendant company’s arbitration clause.

If you’ve been following our blog, you’ve seen the rise in VPPA class action litigation against companies that provide video…

Video game developer Ubisoft, Inc. came out on top earlier this month in the Northern District of California when a judge dismissed, with prejudice, a class action claiming that the company’s use of third-party website pixels violated privacy laws. The judge concluded that the “issue of consent defeat[ed] all of Plaintiffs’ claims.” Lakes v. Ubisoft…

In 2023, visual artists Sarah Andersen, Kelly McKernan, and Karla Ortiz filed a class action lawsuit against several Artificial Intelligence (AI) companies, alleging that the companies’ various AI models violated copyright law by using the artists’ work in their training data sets. In ruling on the defendants’ motion to dismiss in August 2024, Judge William…

This week, Ancestry.com Inc. prevailed in a class action which alleged that it misappropriated consumers’ images and violated their privacy by using such data to solicit and sell their services and products. The court granted Ancestry.com’s motion to dismiss the amended complaint with prejudice because the plaintiffs “did not cure the complaint’s deficiencies” after being…