LinkedIn Faces Class Action over Contact Uploader Emails

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Earlier this month, LinkedIn Corp. was hit with a class action lawsuit alleging it violated California law by misappropriating members’ names and likenesses in order to advertise its contact uploader service for financial gain.

LinkedIn is a career-oriented social networking website that allows members to make connections with others for business and professional purposes. According to the LinkedIn class action lawsuit, the social network’s usefulness depends on increasing its member base to create a larger pool of potential business connections.

When a new user registers for a LinkedIn membership, the user is asked to upload their email address book so that LinkedIn can send email invitations to the new member’s contacts. “Only a fraction of new registrants agree to allow LinkedIn to upload their address book and send emails to their contacts, however,” the LinkedIn class action lawsuit alleges.

“In order to persuade existing LinkedIn members to upload their email address books, LinkedIn began sending periodic emails to its existing members indicating that certain of their LinkedIn contacts had utilized the contact uploader service, as an enticement to persuade those users to do the same thing,” according to the LinkedIn class action lawsuit.

These emails allegedly include the names and photographs of four of the member’s LinkedIn connections and invite the member to click a link to the contact uploader service, where the member is prompted to enter the email addresses and passwords for external email accounts. Once the member enters in the login information for the email accounts, LinkedIn sends email invitations to join LinkedIn to all contacts in the address book (except those linked to current LinkedIn members), according to the class action lawsuit.

Because LinkedIn uses the names and likenesses of its members to promote the contact uploader service, and entices other members to “join” the member and other connections in using the service, “LinkedIn implicitly suggests that they have endorsed the uploader service,” the class action lawsuit alleges.

However, the members “whose names and likenesses have been used to advertise the contact uploader service never gave permission for LinkedIn to use their names and likeness to promote this service,” the LinkedIn class action lawsuit says. “In fact, they are never even made aware that LinkedIn has sent these emails using their names and likenesses. Worse yet, upon information and belief, the vast majority of users whose names and likenesses have been misappropriated to promote the contact uploader service never actually used the contact uploader service that LinkedIn suggests the recipient should ‘join’ them in using.”

Plaintiff Branton Lea filed the class action lawsuit on behalf of himself and “all other LinkedIn members whose names and likenesses have been used by LinkedIn to advertise the contact uploader service without their permission.”

“LinkedIn reaped commercial benefits from the unauthorized use of their names, likeness and/or photographs, and Plaintiff and Class members received no compensation,” Lea alleges in the class action lawsuit.

The LinkedIn class action lawsuit alleges violations of the California Common Law Right of Publicity and California Unfair Competition Law.

Lea is represented by James C. Shah and Rose F. Luzon of Shepherd Finkelman Miller & Shah LLP and Steven A. Schwartz, Timothy N. Mathews and Christina D. Saler of Chimicles & Tikellis LLP.

The LinkedIn Class Action Lawsuit is Lea v. LinkedIn Corp., Case No. 5:15-cv-00236, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.