EFF helped convince the U.S. Supreme Court to invalidate a dangerous patent law precedent that threatened free speech and consumers' rights. The court unanimously held that issuing automatic injunctions in patent cases improperly removed discretion from trial judges to weigh competing factors, including the effect that enforcing the patent would...

EFF has asked a judge today to block a reality TV star’s attempts to censor critical comments about her company on a popular online fashion blog. Corri McFadden, star of the VH1 show “House of Consignment,” filed suit against Purseblog.com in a California federal court after a commenter accused McFadden’s...

EFF filed a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act in 2014 to get access to the government's "Vulnerability Equities Process" (VEP), the policy it uses to decide whether to disclose information about security vulnerabilities or instead withhold this information for its own purposes, including law enforcement, intelligence collection...

EFF filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC) in 2012 seeking export license applications for "surreptitious listening equipment" submitted since 2006. This category of regulated technology is used primarily for wiretapping and EFF filed the lawsuit after the DOC released just two...

This is one of the thousands of cases filed by RIAA member companies against individuals for P2P file sharing. EFF filed an amicus brief on behalf of the defendant asking the court to reject the recording industry's claims that file sharing infringes the distribution right. (According to the recording industry...

EFF is defending the First Amendment rights of a citizen-journalist to link from a public "wiki" to electronic copies of damaging internal Eli Lilly documents relating to the controversial prescription drug Zyprexa. EFF's client an anonymous citizen-journalist posted the links on the wiki located at http://zyprexa.pbwiki.com.. Eli Lilly complained...

Anthony Elonis was convicted of making interstate threats on the basis of violent posts published on Facebook, where he fantasized about killing his ex-wife and law enforcement. After the US Supreme Court agreed to review his conviction, EFF joined the Student Press Law Center and the PEN...

In a legal battle over Internet music storage that could impact innovation and free expression on the Internet EFF Public Knowledge and other public interest groups asked a federal judge in an amicus brief to protect the "safe harbor" rules for online content in EMI v. MP3Tunes. MP3Tunes offers a...

EFF filed suit against three agencies of the Department of Justice (DOJ) demanding records about problems or limitations that hamper electronic surveillance and potentially justify or undermine the Administration's new calls for expanded surveillance powers.

As the FBI is rushing to build a “bigger, faster and better” biometrics database, it’s also dragging its feet in releasing information related to the program’s impact on the American public. In response, EFF has filed a lawsuit to compel the FBI to produce records to satisfy three outstanding Freedom...

EFF filed suit against the Department of Justice in June of 2009 demanding the public release of the surveillance guidelines that govern investigations of Americans by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The FBI's Domestic Investigative Operational Guidelines went into effect in December of 2008 and detail the Bureau's procedures...

EFF has been closely following government plans to collect DNA from more and more people in the US and abroad. DNA collection and profiling are quickly becoming cheaper (pdf), faster, easier, and more prevalent in society. Federal laws and regulations and an...

Recording Industry Cannot Gag Computer Scientists The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) threatened security researchers from Princeton and Rice to stop them from publishing their study of a weak technological protection scheme for CDs called SDMI. EFF filed a lawsuit to protect the researchers' First Amendment right to publish...

EFF joined the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Foundation and the ACLU Foundation of Texas in backing a judge who required a search warrant before approving the seizure of two months of cell phone location data by law enforcement. In this case, the government asked a magistrate judge to approve...

Twenty-two organizations including Unitarian church groups, gun ownership advocates, and a broad coalition of membership and political advocacy organizations filed suit against the National Security Agency for violating their First Amendment right of association by illegally collecting their call records. The coalition is represented by EFF. At the heart of...

EFF has asked an Illinois Circuit Court judge to quash subpoenas aimed at outing opponents of a controversial city project. In December local residents filed a lawsuit in state court against the city of Chicago and local developers challenging the legality of a development project in the city’s Uptown neighborhood...

This is one of the thousands of cases filed by RIAA member companies against individuals for P2P file sharing. EFF filed an amicus brief on behalf of the defendant asking the court to reject the recording industry's claims that file sharing infringes the distribution right. (According to the recording industry...

In this case, Fox News sued a company called TVEyes, claiming the company’s text-searchable database of television and radio content—used by journalists, scholars, and political campaigns to study and monitor the national media—infringed its copyright in its programming. The district court acknowledged that the service is generally a fair use...

EFF defended the free speech rights of a website publisher who had repeatedly received baseless threats from the corporate owners of Barney the Dinosaur. The Lyons Partnership wrongly claimed that Dr. Stuart Frankel's online parody of Barney violated copyright and trademark laws. EFF filed suit on Dr. Frankel's behalf, forcing...

"Technical standards incorporated into law are some of the most important rules of our modern society. In a democracy, the people must have the right to read, know, and speak about the laws by which we choose to govern ourselves.” —Carl Malamud Founder, Public.Resource.Org Our laws belong to all...

Garcia v. Google, Inc. is a copyright case in which the Ninth Circuit has ordered Google to remove copies of the notorious "Innocence of Muslims" film from YouTube. Why? Because one of the actors in the film insists she has a copyright interest in her performance and, based on that...

On December 22 2008 GateHouse Media sued the New York Times alleging that the "hyper-local" news aggregation pages on the New York Times-owned site Boston.com infringed its copyright and trademark rights. At the judge's order the case proceeded on an extraordinarily expedited basis with a bench trial set to begin...

Google v Equustek involves a legal challenge to an extraterritorial order from a Canadian court. EFF intervened in the case after a trial court ruled in June that Google must remove links to full websites that contained pages selling a product that allegedly infringed trade secret rights. The injunction not...

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the American Civil Liberties Union represent Birgitta Jonsdottir a member of the Icelandic Parliament in response to the efforts by the U.S. Department of Justice to seek information and records about her online activities as part of the investigation into Wikileaks. The case is...