SAN FRANCISCO — A federal appeals court has upheld a win for ESPN Inc. in a lawsuit that accused the company of sharing the personal identities of customers who used the sports network's Roku streaming application with data analytics companies.

Plaintiff Chad Eichenberger, who was represented by lawyers at Edelson PC, claimed ESPN violated the Video Privacy Protection Act, or VPPA, by handing over his Roku device serial number and the identity of the videos he watched to Adobe Analytics, which used the information in combination with other data to build consumer marketing profiles. The federal privacy statute, passed in 1988 in the wake of a newspaper printing U.S. Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork's video rental history, bars “video tape service providers” from knowingly handing over “personally identifiable information” and carries stiff statutory penalties.