On August 11, 2025, Judge Susan Illston of the Northern District of California denied a motion to dismiss in Taylor v. ConverseNow Technologies, Inc. (Case No. 25-cv-00990-SI), allowing claims under California’s Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA) Sections 631 and 632 to move forward against an AI voice assistant provider. ConverseNow provides artificial intelligence voice assistant technology that restaurants, including Domino’s, use to answer phone calls, process orders and capture customer information. The plaintiff alleged that when she placed a pizza order by phone, her call was intercepted and routed through ConverseNow’s servers, where her name, address and credit card details were recorded without her knowledge or consent. Read the full Alert on the Duane Morris website.
Northern District of California Dismisses CIPA “Trap and Trace” Claim Over TikTok Tracking Code
On August 6, 2025, in Mitchener v. CuriosityStream, Inc., Judge Noël Wise of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California dismissed with prejudice a putative class action alleging that CuriosityStream’s use of TikTok tracking software on its website violated the California Invasion of Privacy Act’s “trap and trace” provisions. The ruling follows Judge Wise’s June 24, 2025, decision in Kishnani v. Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd., which dismissed a substantively identical complaint brought by the same plaintiffs’ counsel. The Kishnani matter is currently on appeal to the Ninth Circuit, but Judge Wise declined to delay ruling in Mitchener pending the outcome of that appeal. Read the full Alert on the Duane Morris website.
District Court Rejects CIPA Lawsuit, Setting a Higher Standard for Privacy Plaintiffs
In some positive news for companies facing privacy claims over marketing and tracking technologies, Judge Haywood S. Gilliam Jr. of the Northern District of California has dismissed a putative class action brought under the California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA) against the Gap Inc. The case, Ramos v. The Gap, Inc., No. 4:23-cv-04715-HSG, challenged Gap’s use of Bluecore Inc.’s email marketing technology, which tracks whether a customer opens a marketing email, clicks a link and later interacts with the website. The court’s ruling, issued on July 29, 2025, adds to the growing body of federal precedent pushing back on expansive interpretations of Section 631(a) of CIPA in the digital context. Read the full Alert on the Duane Morris website.