In In re Facebook Biometric Information Privacy Litigation, 185 F. Supp. 3d 1155, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 60046, (N.D. Cal. 2016):
- A class action against Facebook was filed pursuant to the Illinois Biometric Informration Privacy Act (BIPA). Parties agreed to transfer case to N.D. California, but wanted Illinois law (and not CA law) to apply.
- Plaintiff’s alleged that facial and other recognition used by Facebook violated BIPA
- Facebook argued that its choice of law clause in its current Terms of Use required the use of CA law.
- There were three plaintiffs at issue and court reviewed the sign up procedure for each (2005, 2008 and 2009).
- When Facebook updated its Terms it emailed a notice to all user’s email addresses and the next time each user logged on, they saw “jewel” notification in their personal newsfeed alerting to the change in such documents but no affirmative action was required by each user).BUT said the general and individualized notice was enough, that the agreement was effective, but that in the situation it would not apply CA law.
- The Court said that the notice provided by Facebook was enough to have a binding choice of law provision (seemed to like the “personalized” nature of the news feed notice).
- But the Court then still chose to apply IL law as opposed to CA.