Privacy Law Blog : Privacy Lawyers & Attorneys : Proskauer Rose Law Firm : CAN-SPAM, FCRA, FACTA

In a decision dated September 23, 2011, the Court of Appeal of Caen suspended the implementation of a whistleblowing system that had been previously authorized by the French Data Protection Agency (CNIL) because, in the court’s view, the system infringed on the individual and collective rights and liberties of the company’s employees.

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On October 12, 2011, the FTC announced that it, along with Frostwire LLC and FrostWire’s managing member, Angel Leon, (collectively, “FrostWire”), agreed to a stipulated final order for permanent injunction resulting from the FTC’s complaint alleging that (a) users of FrostWire’s Android mobile file-sharing application were likely to unwittingly share personal files stored on their mobile devices with other P2P users after installing and running the application, and (b) FrostWire misrepresented to users of FrostWire’s desktop file-sharing application that certain files they downloaded would not be shared with other P2P users.  

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Suzlon Energy Ltd. demanded Microsoft to produce emails from the Hotmail email account of Rajagopalan Sridhar, an Indian citizen imprisoned abroad. The district court held that the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (“ECPA”) prohibited Microsoft from producing the documents even though Sridhar was not a U.S. citizen. The Ninth Circuit affirmed.

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On September 26, Judge William Walls of the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey ruled that a putative class action lawsuit against home goods retailer Williams-Sonoma failed to state a claim under New Jersey law. In Feder v. Williams-Sonoma Stores, Inc., the plaintiff sought damages for purported violations of New Jersey’s Truth-in-Consumer Contract, Warranty and Notice Act (“TCCWNA”) after a Williams-Sonoma employee allegedly required the plaintiff to provide her zip code as part of a credit card transaction. The TCCWNA prohibits, among other things, the offering, entering into, giving or displaying a written consumer contract or notice “which includes any provision that violates any clearly established legal right of a consumer” under New Jersey or Federal law. In somewhat confusing fashion, the plaintiff’s complaint alleged that the electronic credit card transaction forms into which Williams-Sonoma enters consumers’ zip codes constituted consumer contracts that were subject to TCCWNA and that the collection of consumer zip codes on such forms violated the TCCWNA.

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