Facebook's Lawsuit Against Data Analytics Firm Rankwave Removed to Federal Court
Rankwave's lawyers at Skadden wrote in the filing removing the case from San Mateo Superior Court that Facebook had failed to adhere to its own terms of service and platform policy since before the company's Cambridge Analytica scandal.
June 27, 2019 at 06:11 PM
3 minute read
Facebook headquarters. Photo: Jason Doiy/ALM
Lawyers for South Korean data analytics firm Rankwave Co. are seeking to remove a lawsuit to federal court that claims that the company abused Facebook's data use policy.
Facebook's lawyers at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher sued Rankwave in San Mateo Superior Court in May claiming the data analytics firm refused to cooperate with a compliance audit and delete data as required by Facebook's data policy for third-party developers.
But Rankwave's lawyers at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom on Thursday removed the case to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Rankwave claims that the case is appropriate for federal court since the amount at stake exceeds $75,000 and the dispute is between “citizens of a State and citizens or subjects of a foreign state.” The Skadden lawyers note that Facebook's claimed in the state court complaint that Rankwave had been “unjustly enriched in the amount of $9,800,000”—the alleged sale price in the data analytics firm's acquisition by a South Korean entertainment company.
At the time of the suit's initial filing in May, Jessica Romero, Facebook's director of platform enforcement and litigation, took to the company's blog to announce that Facebook had suspended apps and accounts associated with Rankwave, and that the lawsuit sought to enforce the terms of cooperation that Rankwave agreed to in exchange for the ability to operate apps on the social media platform. “By filing the lawsuit, we are sending a message to developers that Facebook is serious about enforcing our policies, including requiring developers to cooperate with us during an investigation,” she said.
But in Thursday's filing, Rankwave's lawyers at Skadden wrote that Facebook had failed ”to adhere to or police” its own terms of service and platform policy since before the company's Cambridge Analytica scandal. ”Facebook itself engaging in far worse conduct than that falsely alleged against Rankwave, and Facebook's own employees expressly approving Rankwave's collection and use of data found on Facebook in an in-person meeting between Rankwave and Facebook on May 12, 2016, Facebook now asserts that it was somehow injured as a result of certain alleged breaches by Rankwave,” wrote Skadden's John Neukom.
Neukom didn't immediately respond to a message Thursday.
In an emailed statement, a Facebook spokesperson said the company looks “forward to Rankwave responding to Facebook's complaint with actual evidence in court.”
Read more:
Judge Orders Facebook to Produce Documents Detailing Handling of User Data
In Cambridge Analytica Case, Judge Calls Out Facebook's Flip Flopping Privacy Rhetoric
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