Across the country, a vigorous debate is taking place in federal and state courthouses about how privacy protections should apply to modern technologies. One of the most spirited issues in this debate is whether the Fourth Amendment requires law enforcement to get a warrant to track a person’s location...

Today, in Williamson v. Citrix, the Federal Circuit overruled its ill-advised case law that has been one of the primary drivers of overbroad software patents. The court finally recognized that patent applicants cannot bypass certain limits on patent rights solely by avoiding magic words. EFF filed an amicus...

In a dangerous ruling yesterday, a Canadian appeals court upheld an order requiring Google to edit the Internet and effectively “disappear” websites selling a product that allegedly infringed trade secret rights. Google had challenged the order as an improper overreach: a Canadian court shouldn't be using its authority to...

One of the best weapons a patent troll has in extorting an undeserved settlement is the cost of litigation. If a defendant knows that a case will drag on for several months, or even years, and will require her to spend significant resources to prevail, she is more likely to...

Supreme Court Reverses Conviction in Elonis v. United States, Avoids Answering First Amendment Question
The US Supreme Court has overturned the conviction of Anthony Elonis, a Pennsylvania man also known by his nom de rap Tone Dougie, for violating the federal criminal threat statute. A jury had convicted...

The story being spun by the defenders of Section 215 of the Patriot Act and the Obama Administration is that if the law sunsets entirely, the government will lose critical surveillance capabilities. The fearmongering includes President Obama, who said: “heaven forbid we’ve got a problem where we could’ve prevented...

Today, the Supreme Court decided Commil v. Cisco, a patent case that asked whether having a “good-faith belief” that a patent is invalid means that someone can’t induce infringement of a patent.
As we previously noted, this is a complex area of patent law. Generally, the law...

Today, in an important First Amendment decision, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals blocked an attempt by the NAACP to use trademark as a tool to censor unwanted online criticism—a result we had urged in an amicus brief filed with the court back in October. The Fourth Circuit...

UPDATE: In March 2016, relying in large part on Section 230, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit affirmed the district court's dismissal of plaintiffs' lawsuit.
A federal judge in Massachusetts dismissed a lawsuit brought against the classified ads website Backpage.com over posting ads for the...

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: violating a computer use restriction is not a crime. That’s why today EFF filed an amicus brief urging the Oregon Supreme Court to review a troubling opinion by the Oregon Court of Appeals in State v....