Today  Lex Machina and LexisNexis announced the official release of a new topical area of analytics — Internet Law. This new federal practice area  includes data for any case with one or more claims brought under one of the following federal statutes: (i) the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), (ii) the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), or (iii) the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) which includes the Stored Communications Act (SCA). It is an important area of law in which transparency and understanding provide a crucial edge. The new Internet Law Module provides insights on judges, courts, law firms, attorneys, and parties involved in internet litigation.  The module provides litigation  analytics for over 10,000 cases.

“Internet litigation is a fascinating and cutting-edge area of law focused on the evolving regulation of online activity,” said Carla Rydholm, Lex Machina’s Senior Director of Product Management. “The nature of the claims span a wide range, from content management rights to electronic communication claims to access authorization. Lex Machina is proud to provide analytics on this new and relevant area of law – in doing so, we provide crucial insights on the key players and outcomes involved in internet litigation.”

The Internet Law Module incorporates case tag filters for cases involving claims under the CFAA, the DMCA, and the ECPA. It also incorporates an extensive collection of practice area-specific damages and findings. The inclusion of these unique parameters enables users to find the most relevant information and analytics quickly and easily.

The current set of Internet Law Module cases, documents, and filters can help uncover insights such as:

  • The Southern District of New York had the highest number of cases filed involving claims under the DMCA.
  • For cases involving claims under the ECPA, claimants won 2.3 times as often as claim defendants.
  • Most active defendants in internet litigation cases include Facebook, Inc., Google Inc., and Apple Inc.
  • Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart was the most active law firm representing defendants in cases with claims under the CFAA.
  • The median time to termination for internet law cases was 290 days.
  • Courts ruled in favor of claim defendants at judgment on the pleadings the majority of the time with regard to most findings.
  • The total amount of internet damages awarded in the ten-year period from 2012 to 2021, excluding attorneys’ fees, was $493 million.

The  Lex Machina legal analytics platform  is built on a technology platform which leverages a combination of proprietary natural language processing technology  and attorney review to analyze the over 700,000 court documents included in the Internet Law Module, Lex Machina  built its reputation  for excellence by curating , enhancing and correcting  the tags which generate the analytics The Internet Law modules provides the standard Lex Machina  insights about courts, judges, law firms, lawyers, and parties.