The blockchain payment giant Ripple Labs had sued YouTube in April this year, accusing it of federal trademark law violation for not stopping the hundreds of XRP scams. These scams used the company’s images and names and CEO Brad Garlinghouse, urging users to send them XRP tokens, which would purportedly be doubled. YouTube filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit earlier this year, arguing that federal internet laws relieve sites like YouTube of responsibility for what third-parties choose to publish on their platforms.
Ripple accuses YouTube of ‘feigning ignorance’ for allowing scams.
The blockchain payment giant Ripple Labs has accused YouTube of being ‘willfully blind’ and ‘feigning ignorance’ for allowing scammers to impersonate the San Francisco-based company. In its filing at the Northern District of California, Ripple claimed that the scammers initially used email phishing campaigns to hack YouTube accounts. However, the scam’s success depended on YouTube’s “complacency and unwillingness to take action,” according to the company. The video-sharing giant YouTube had argued in its motion to dismiss that it’s not obligated to remove potentially infringing content from its platform, reported Saumil Kohli.
Ripple claims it had notified YouTube of the scams several times.
The San Fransisco-based company countered YouTube’s claim, revealing that it had notified the video-sharing platform of the scams several times. Ripple claimed in its filing that by actively participating in the scam and utterly failing to stop it, YouTube contributorily infringed Ripple’s trademarks, violated the CEO Garlinghouse’s right of publicity, and engaged in unlawful, unfair, and fraudulent business practices under California law. The video-sharing giant also ignored the wide media coverage on the XRP scams on its platforms, Ripple added. Several media outlets started reporting about the scams in early 2019, Ripple stated in its filing.
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