DoubleClick Thursday won a victory in its ongoing legal entanglements, with
one of its class-action suits being thrown out in a New York City courtroom.
The case against Alley-based DoubleClick, 00 Civ. 0641, alleged that the
firm’s use of “cookies” — small text files that anonymously records which
sites a user visits — violates state and federal laws. The plaintiffs in
the class action suit — 13 consumers in the New York area — alleged the
company violated the Wiretap Act, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and the
Electronic Communications Privacy Act.
But U.S. District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald dismissed the year-old suit,
writing that DoubleClick’s practices weren’t illegal, but instead, were part
of a publicly available and well-known business plan for commercial gain.
For those reasons, Judge Buchwald wrote in a 71-page opinion that the
plaintiffs failed to provide evidence that DoubleClick violated any of the
three federal laws.
Indeed, Buchwald ruled that the plaintiffs had failed to demonstrate that
DoubleClick gained unauthorized access to their computers. She also said
that DoubleClick’s Web publishers were not violating visitors’ rights by
passing on their information to the firm — since the exchange of
information was overtly authorized by the publishers themselves, and tacitly
by users’ decision to visit those sites.
Additionally, Buchwald said the intent of the three Acts were not to
prohibit practices like DoubleClick’s use of cookies.
“This groundbreaking decision marks the first time a court has
interpreted these statutes in the context of Internet advertising,” said
Elizabeth Wang, said DoubleClick vice president and general counsel, in a
statement reiterated by Buchwald.
The online ad serving firm isn’t out of the woods yet, however — it
still faces similar suits in Texas and California. Nevertheless, it’s good
news in a time when DoubleClick could use it. The news comes following
admitted hacker break-ins earlier this week, raising questions about the ad
network’s security practices among privacy advocates.
It also comes as the online ad industry is looking for credibility in the
eyes of traditional advertisers — and many insiders feel that the ad
networks’ ability to track post-click user activities, using cookies, is one
of the industry’s most important offerings.
DoubleClick was represented by Morrison & Foerster, while the firms
Millberg Weiss Bershad Hynes & Lerach and Bernstein, Litowitz, Berger &
Grossmann represented the plaintiffs. Attorneys at Morrison & Foerster
referred all questions to DoubleClick.
