United States of America: Issued court ruling dismissing FTC lawsuit against Kochava Inc

On 4 May 2023, the District Court of Idaho issued its ruling in the public lawsuit brought before the Court by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) against the data broker company Kochava, dismissing the FTC lawsuit. The FTC alleged that Kochava had sold sensitive location data from hundreds of millions of mobile devices that could be used to track consumers, in particular, to identify people's visits to reproductive health clinics, places of worship, homeless and domestic violence shelters, and addiction recovery facilities. The Court found that the FTC did not sufficiently demonstrate consumer harm and noted the alleged consequences of selling data are not "sufficiently severe" to be considered a substantial injury. The Court allowed FTC to file an amended complaint within 30 days.