Yelp prevailed in the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the court dismissing a libel lawsuit brought by a locksmith business in Washington state. The owner said Yelp transferred a negative review about another company to his business to force him to advertise with Yelp. The court cited a federal law holding that online content providers are not liable for third-party content. (The Wall Street Journal, September 13, 2016, by Jacob Gershman)
The law, the Communications Decency Act, states that no provider of interactive service should be considered a publisher or speaker of information submitted by a third party. The court said the locksmith also did not prove his allegation that Yelp made up the content using the third party’s identity (Metropolitan News-Enterprise, September 13, 2016, by Kennth Ofgang)