A purported class of influencers sufficiently alleges contract interference

There’s a lot of really interesting things at stake in this recent case out of the Northern District of California, Batra v. POPSUGAR, Inc., Case No. 18-cv-03752-HSG, including a contract angle. The case concerns an alleged class of influencers suing POPSUGAR for altering their postings in various ways. In addition to copyright and publicity right violations, the purported class alleges contract interference, because influencers can enter into contracts to receive a cut of the revenue generated by the links on their sites, but POPSUGAR’s alleged alterations stripped the monetized links from the postings. Therefore, the class alleged that POPSUGAR was interfering with their contracts with the website linked to. The court found that the class’s allegations on this count (and every other count in the complaint) were sufficient to survive a motion to dismiss. 

I’m fascinated by this case and can’t wait to see where it goes, especially as we get further into the class action allegations. (But probably it’ll settle before we get to the good stuff.)