Weekly IP Buzz for the Week Ending July 30, 2021

In this week's post, we see that the Texas Supreme Court found Facebook can be sued by women who claimed it facilitated sex-trafficking rings that forced them into prostitution.

Courts Applying Texas Sex Trafficking Law Reject Facebook Safe Harbor Defense

The Texas Supreme Court has ruled that Facebook can be sued under a state legal action (Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 98.002) that punishes those that intentionally or knowingly benefit from sex trafficking.  Using state law, but not federal law, three women that claim they were forced into prostitution by abusers that utilized Facebook were given the go-ahead to pursue their lawsuits against the technology giant under Texas law. 

According to the lawsuit, Facebook failed to put in adequate safeguards that would protect potential victims and prevent sex traffickers from utilizing the social networking site to prey on the plethora of minors that use the site.  Arguably, because Facebook continues to benefit from advertising profits off of its more than 2 billion users, the women claim that the company has done nothing to use its platform to speak out against the dangers of sex trafficking or prevent it, and as such, it intentionally or knowingly benefits from sex trafficking.

Read the full article here.

Click to read the previous Weekly IP Buzz on Thriving Attorney.

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In addition to publishing Thriving Attorney, Darin M. Klemchuk is founder of Klemchuk LLP, a litigation, intellectual property, and transactional law firm located in Dallas, Texas. Click to read more about Darin Klemchuk's practice as an intellectual property lawyer. For more on the latest developments in IP law, see the blogs Ideate and IP Questions Answered.