SEATTLE (Legal Newsline) - Kim Carter Martinez, on behalf of herself and all others similarly situated, filed a federal class action complaint on September 30 in the Western District of Washington against ZoomInfo Technologies Inc. for violation of California’s Right of Publicity Statute and violation of California Common Law Tort – Misappropriation of Name and Likeness.
According to the complaint, Martinez has never used zoominfo.com, did not provide her name, contact information, professional histories, likenesses, or any other personal information to ZoomInfo. Martinez alleges having found her information and likeness being used by ZoomInfo and was seriously distressed to discover that ZoomInfo is using her name and personal information to advertise subscriptions to zoominfo.com.
ZoomInfo advertises teaser profiles of Martinez with the draw of having more personal information about her, and others, who do not use the site and have not consented to the site using their personal information for the advertising. ZoomInfo has acknowledged that it “relies heavily” on “the indexing of public-facing directory pages” – that is, the public teaser profiles containing Plaintiff’s and Class Members’ names and personal information – “to generate a significant portion of the traffic to our website," the suit says.
Martinez seeks a declaration that ZoomInfo’s acts and omissions constitute a knowing misappropriation of names, likeness, photographs, and other personal information, and infringe on protected privacy and intellectual property rights, in violation of California law; nominal damages, preliminary and permanent injunctive relief, restitution, damages and royalties, cost of suit and attorney's fees. Martinez is represented by Samuel J. Strauss of Turke & Strauss LLP.
U.S. District Court Western District of Washington case number 3:21-cv-05725