Weekly IP Buzz for the Week Ending January 14, 2022

In this week's post, we see that the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decided that Google’s class action settlement terms were sufficient despite not paying class action members directly.

Google's Street View Class Action Settlement Pays Advocacy Groups Not Class Members

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against privacy advocacy groups recently when it found Google’s settlement agreement terms regarding a class action over Street View was sufficient.

The decision came after a long-disputed fight between Google and privacy advocates regarding Google’s agreement to pay $13 million to the advocacy groups instead of to the class action members directly. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, the same Circuit Court of Appeals that had originally denied Google’s initial attempts to get out of the class action suits in 2013, ultimately found for Google in 2021.

The dispute arose when several different groups of class action plaintiffs filed actions against Google over its ubiquitous Street View feature of its Google Maps. Since 2010, the legal wrangling has raged on because privacy advocates argued that Google was collecting sensitive data illegally when it shot its famous panoramic photographs of streets because, while doing so, Google has also been collecting personal information of private citizens via access of private Wi-Fi networks.

Read the full article here.

Click to read the previous Weekly IP Buzz on Thriving Attorney.

For more posts, see our Ideate blog for the latest news and insights into law, business, and culture.

--------

In addition to publishing Thriving Attorney, Darin M. Klemchuk is founder of Klemchuk LLP, a litigation, intellectual property, and transactional law firm located in Dallas, Texas. Click to read more about Darin Klemchuk's practice as an intellectual property lawyer. For more on the latest developments in IP law, see the blogs Ideate and IP Questions Answered.