State court decisions
Ohio’s Fifth District Court of Appeals affirmed that Google Search is not a common carrier under Ohio common law, holding that a search engine’s curated results page is an editorial product, not the neutral transport of others’ content.
Orange County Superior Court sustains demurrer on Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code section 14245 trademark infringement and section 14247 dilution counts for ambiguous mark identification, missing state registration, and conclusory scienter allegations, while allowing a conversion claim premised on a trademark to proceed.
Orange County Superior Court dismisses four federal trademark cancellation counts without leave to amend, holding that newly added Bus. & Prof. Code section 17500 and 17200 claims are merely repackaged ownership disputes that do not qualify as causes of action ‘involving a trademark registration’ under 15 U.S.C. section 1119.
In a certified-for-publication opinion, the California Court of Appeal reversed dismissal of Guild Mortgage’s claims against CrossCountry Mortgage for aiding and abetting employee duty-of-loyalty breaches, holding for the first time that California’s trade secret statute does not preempt civil claims under the state’s computer fraud act.
A Delaware jury unanimously found that Cummins Inc. misappropriated C3 AI trade secrets and awarded $23.3 million in damages, adding to the growing body of high-value trade secret verdicts involving proprietary AI technology.
In a consolidated order resolving three writ petitions, the Nevada Supreme Court applied its earlier TikTok and Snap decisions to reject Meta’s challenge to the State’s deceptive-trade-practices, products liability, negligence, and unjust enrichment claims over Messenger, Facebook, and Instagram — holding that personal jurisdiction was properly exercised and that neither Section 230 nor the First Amendment shields Meta from state-law claims aimed at platform design rather than third-party content.
In a landmark ruling, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court held that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act does not immunize Meta from state-law claims that Instagram was deliberately designed to addict children — distinguishing platform design choices from third-party content moderation.
A Fayette County, Pennsylvania trial court refused to dismiss a wrongful-death suit against FareHarbor — the platform that managed a rafting outfitter’s website — holding that Section 230 does not immunize a defendant alleged to have helped develop the offending content.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court joined a near-unanimous national consensus that an electronic service provider that scans user accounts for child sexual abuse material and reports its findings does so as a private actor, not a government agent — and that neither Section 230 nor 18 U.S.C. § 2258A converts that activity into state action.
Iowa’s Attorney General sued TikTok over what she alleges are deceptive ’12+’ age ratings in the Apple App Store. A unanimous Iowa Supreme Court held that TikTok’s contractual relationships with hundreds of thousands of Iowa users, plus its targeted advertising and Iowa-specific data collection, were more than enough to support specific personal jurisdiction.
A Georgia trial court granted OpenAI summary judgment in a defamation suit over a ChatGPT hallucination, ruling that a reasonable user would not treat the chatbot’s output as a factual assertion in light of OpenAI’s hallucination warnings.