14 DAY TRIAL // An US district judge has dismissed most claims in a lawsuit against Interclick and some of its customers resulting from the ad network's cookie respawning practices.
The lawsuit filed on behalf of a New York resident named Sonal Bose claimed that Interclick together with Microsoft, McDonald's and other companies that used the network's code on their websites, violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, as well as other statuses regulating contracts.
Interclick was caught respawning deleted HTTP tracking cookies from copies stored in Flash Locally Shared Objects (LSOs). In addition, the advertising network exploited a decade-old browser vulnerability to determine if users visited certain websites.
On Wednesday, US District Judge Deborah A. Batts of the Southern District of New York, threw out most of the lawsuit's claims including all against Microsoft and McDonald's.
The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act claims were dismissed because the plaintiff failed to prove economic damages of at least $5,000 as required by the statute.
"The limit based on economic damages under the CFAA 'precludes damages for death, personal injury, mental distress, and the like'," the judge wrote, quoting a 2004 ruling of the Ninth Circuit US Court of Appeals.
Only claims against Interclick brought under New York State laws were maintained, along with one under a trespass statute.
The abuse of Flash local storage in order to recreate deleted cookies is not new. A number of big companies including Disney and Warner Bros. were sued for using similar code on their websites.
The European advertising industry association, IAB Europe, publicly condemned cookie respawning because it disregards consumer choice and warned all of its members against engaging in such practices.
Adobe has worked with browser developers to allow LSOs to be cleared from inside the browser interface in a similar manner HTTP cookies are.