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...

The man who claims to have created "The Electric Slide" agreed to call off his online takedown campaign and stop threatening anyone using the popular line dance for non-commercial purposes. The agreement settles a lawsuit filed by EFF on behalf of videographer Kyle Machulis who posted a concert video to...

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 urging a federal judge to quickly resolve a dispute over the use of the term “Mormon” in an online dating site, arguing that extended litigation based on a frivolous claim could bury a small business in its infancy. Intellectual Reserve, Inc., which manages intellectual property rights for The...

EFF successfully blocked a brazen attempt to unmask the identities of anonymous members of an online discussion group for embroidery fans. The online group was created to share information about a long-running campaign to threaten purchasers of embroidery designs and software with copyright infringement lawsuits. The Embroidery Software Protection Coalition...

In 2007 after Wired reported on evidence that the FBI was able to use “secret spyware” to track the source of e-mailed bomb threats against a Washington state high school EFF submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for information on the technology. The documents we received discuss endpoint surveillance...

EFF has urged a San Francisco federal court and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to dismiss Facebook's claims that criminal law is violated when its users opt for an add-on service that helps them aggregate their information from a variety of social networking sites. Power Ventures was a company...

EFF filed a lawsuit against the Department of Justice in May 2017 seeking records about the FBI’s training and use of Best Buy Geek Squad employees to conduct warrantless searches of customers’ computers. A federal prosecution of a doctor in California revealed that the FBI has been working for several...

EFF has been closely following FBI's work to build out its Next Generation Identification (NGI) biometrics database. NGI expands the FBI’s IAFIS criminal and civil fingerprint database to include multimodal biometric identifiers such as iris scans, palm prints, face-recognition-ready photos, and voice data, and makes that...

In 2009 EFF sent a FOIA request to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) seeking documents related to the FCC's claimed authority to conduct warrantless searches of private residences in order to inspect radio equipment. The FCC responded in September 20009. Included in the release are records of about two...

EFF submitted a FOIA request to the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC), an interagency law enforcement training center run by the Department of Homeland Security. EFF requested all information, training materials, and presentations for FLETC's Mobile Device Investigations Program. In response, EFF recieved over 2,000 pages of...

Does the First Amendment guarantee the right of individuals to record police officers exercising their official duties in public? That is the question being considered by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in two consolidated cases: Fields v. City of Philadelphia and Geraci v. City of Philadelphia...

John Doe is an anonymous poster on an internet message board who made some statements critical of Plaintiff First Cash a Texas-based chain of pawn shops and check cashing services. First Cash sued doe in Texas claiming breach of contract on the claim that Doe "may have been" an employee...

EFF has sued the Department of Justice (DOJ), demanding answers about illegal email and telephone call surveillance at the National Security Agency (NSA). The FISA Amendments Act (FAA) of 2008 gave the NSA expansive power to spy on Americans’ international email and telephone calls. However, last month, a government lawyer...

On January 17 2007 the Bush Administration announced that it had let the shadowy Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) review the NSA's domestic spying program which was previously operated without any judicial authorization whatsoever. This Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) case seeks disclosure of the FISC's secret orders. While claiming...

EFF urged a federal appeals court to protect the rights of start-up innovators working to improve TV viewing and other entertainment experiences, arguing that big content companies should not be allowed to block add-on technology with baseless copyright claims. At issue in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is...

EFF has filed a friend-of-the-court brief urging a federal court judge to block two criminal statutes that unconstitutionally limit the free expression of millions of adults who use the Internet and other electronic forms of communication bringing the threat of criminal sanctions for private lawful speech. At issue are provisions...

EFF and the California First Amendment Coalition (CFAC) asked a California appeals court to scrutinize a chemical company's attempt to strip the anonymity from a participant in an online message board. The participant posted information that H.B. Fuller Co. claims could only have been obtained through a company "town hall...

EFF, together with Durie Tangri LLP, is defending a photo hobbyist against an outrageous patent suit from a company that claims to hold the rights to online competitions on social networks where users vote for the winner. EFF’s client runs Bytephoto.com, which has hosted user-submitted photos and run competitions for...

This case seeks to stop AT&T and two data location aggregators from allowing numerous entities—including bounty hunters, car dealerships, landlords, and stalkers—to access wireless customers’ real-time locations without authorization. An investigation by Motherboard earlier this year revealed that any cellphone user’s precise, real-time location could be bought for just...

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...