Melissa Fox

Companies should brace for another surge in California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA) claims after two federal court decisions may encourage plaintiffs to file even more claims relating to website analytics tools. No industry has been immune from the recent wave of cases alleging that common website analytics tools violate a decades-old California statute enacted well before the advent of the internet.

by Melissa Fox From the humble beginnings in his home workshop in 1972, Phil Robertson and his family built a booming business building duck calls. Not just any duck calls, Duck Commander calls; calls made for duck hunters, by duck hunters. Phil and his family grew the Duck Commander business eventually leading to a popular series of VHS and later DVD videos called Duckmen.

Enacted in in 1988 after Judge Robert Bork’s video rental history was leaked by a store clerk and published in a newspaper profile about the Supreme Court nominee, the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA) was the result of public outcry and bipartisan action, and became one of the country’s first federal privacy laws. For decades, the VPPA did not attract much attention, as people became less concerned about publicizing their video rental history when they stopped renting videos.