Category: Internet Law

Amazon Go Stores recently announced a new biometric technology making it even easier for customers to come, shop, and go at these retail outlets. See news report here. The technology involves palm geometry and blood vessel scanning. Like fingerprints, retinal patterns and face geometry, each person’s blood vessel configuration is unique and, once scanned and […]

One of the “new normals” in our COVID-19 pandemic employment world is the ever more common use of employee teleconferences. This is one of the many innovations that has resulted from a huge increase in remote working and remote workers. As a result, businesses must begin establishing rules, procedures, and protocols for these types of […]

Website accessibility for the visually impaired has been one of the thornier legal issues that has arisen over the last decade or so. This is because the federal Americans With Disabilities Act (“ADA”) requires that all places of “public accommodation” be accessible to those with disabilities. However, it was a debatable legal question about whether […]

The City of Portland, Oregon, just banned the use of facial recognition technology by private businesses and individuals. See Popular Mechanics news report here. Portland previously banned use of facial recognition by law enforcement and city agencies. However, now all private entities are prohibited from using facial recognition software and technology anywhere in the City […]

Governor Gavin Newsom recently signed Assembly Bill (“AB”) 713 which amends the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”). See text of AB 713 here. The CCPA has now been amended at least eight times and businesses should expect continued changes in the coming years. AB 713 makes several amendments to the CCPA the most important of […]

Capital One, N.A., and Capital One Bank (USA), N.A. (“Capital One”) were recently fined $80 million for a 2019 data breach and data security failures that contributed to the data breach. See Reuters report here. The result is in line with many governmental investigations and fines that have been imposed for cybersecurity failures over the […]

On August 20, 2020, the Department of Justice announced that a criminal complaint was filed against the former Chief Security Officer for Uber Technologies, Inc., related to an alleged concealment of a data breach/hack in 2016. See news report here. The criminal complaint charged the Security Officer with two counts — obstruction of justice and […]

A California federal court has recently ruled that “piggybacking” on an Amazon product listing — where the piggybacking takes the buyer to a different but similar product —  is actionable trademark infringement. See Lavco Solutions, Inc. v. Biztracker Systems of St. John, LLC, Case No. 2:20-cv-03286-VAP-PLAx (US Dist. C.D. Cal. August 25, 2020). In this […]

Over the last few years, there has been a significant legal trend toward protecting consumer privacy with respect to facial recognition software and other types of biometric identifiers. The California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA) protects personal information from being collected, shared and used by private businesses without notice and consent. The definition of “personal information” […]

On August 14, 2020, the final version of the regulations for the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”) were issued by the California Attorney General (“AG”). See here. The final regulations are intended to flesh out areas of confusion in the statute itself and, also, to aid the AG’s Office in its enforcement efforts. For most […]