Posts Tagged: "open api"

Google Sued for Privacy Violation, Patent App Provides Clues

On May 17, 2010, Google, Inc. was sued in the United States Federal District Court for the District of Oregon by Vicki Van Valin and Neil Mertz; the allegations asserting violation of Oregon, Washington and US privacy statutes (18 USC 2511). The original complaint also seeks to certify a class action against Google, who has already admitted that it engaged in inappropriate collecting of private information from unsuspecting Internet users. Google characterizes the privacy violations as a “mistake,” but a recently published US patent application assigned to Google may suggest that there were those within Google who gave considerable consideration to such an invasion of privacy through the use of sniffer or snooping software.