The lawsuit, filed in 2020, claims that IBM created a dataset by scanning 100 million images from Flickr and made it available to for-profit entities. Google reportedly used this dataset to enhance its facial recognition technologies. The plaintiffs alleged that these technologies were employed in products such as Google Photos, Google Nest Hub Max, Google Pixel smartphones, and the Cloud Vision API.
In a previous ruling, Judge Freeman dismissed the case but allowed Vance and Janecyk to amend their complaint. This time, the judge concluded that the plaintiffs had provided enough evidence to suggest that the alleged violations occurred “primarily and substantially” in Illinois. Specifically, they claimed that the Pixel smartphones were engineered in Chicago and that the dataset included images of Illinois residents.
While Google argued that the plaintiffs failed to prove where the dataset was obtained or how it profited from it, Judge Freeman stated that these facts were not “necessarily dispositive.”
