BALTIMORE — A Maryland judge ruled on Monday that a lawsuit against Meta, over alleged discrimination by Instagram against an adult business, can move forward.
U.S. District Judge Richard D. Bennett ruled in favor of a business using the Instagram handle @lickmykakez and purveying what the filings describe as “fine adult paraphernalia.”
The account is currently attached to influencer and former adult performer Kakey, aka LickMyKakez, and boasts over 2.5 million followers.
Judge Bennett told Meta lawyers that the owner of the @lickmykakez trademark has grounds to hold the internet platform giant “legally liable for disabling her account and flooding the market with fakes,” legal news site Law360 reported yesterday.
The case is being watched closely by others in the adult industry who have trademarked their names, including performers, content creators and large companies such as Pornhub.
As XBIZ reported, last week a group of performers and organizations, led by Pornhub, sent a letter to Mark Zuckerberg and other Meta execs, decrying blatant discrimination against sex workers. Instagram has yet to respond to follow-up questions about its permanent shutdown of the adult platform’s account.
Meta attempted to squash a lawsuit filed by @lickmykakez trademark holder Tiara Johnson in Harford County Circuit Court in Maryland, later removed to Judge Bennett’s court in January, Law 360 reported.
An Influencer and ‘Sex Toy Purveyor’ Protecting Her Trademark
Johnson’s lawsuit contends, “Meta broke the law by disabling her verified account, which boasted some 2.7 million followers and allegedly generated $10,000 a week in sales, and permitted various imposters to use her brand name — lickmykakez — to sell adult toys and products, cutting in on Johnson’s own businesses selling adult toys and products.”
Meta’s lawyers failed to convince Judge Bennett that “the Instagram terms of use do not establish Facebook’s contractual obligation to communicate with plaintiff the reasons why her account was disabled.”
Meta also insisted that the Instagram TOS “nowhere remotely suggest, much less establish an agreement to, a contractual obligation on Facebook’s part to prevent the creation of allegedly ‘false or imitation’ accounts.”
Meta told the judge that the company prefers to handle trademark disputes through its internal report system.
The Meta lawyers argued that Instagram’s terms of use do not condone users infringing upon the intellectual property rights of others, and that “the complaint does not allege that plaintiff reported these ‘imitation’ accounts to Facebook or that Facebook was aware that they had been created on the Instagram platform.”
Meta asked that Judge Bennett either dismiss the case or “send it to the Northern District of California, which is where, according to Instagram’s terms of use that users agree to, lawsuits are litigated regarding those terms,” Law360 reported.
Familiar Allegations of Insider Extortion
Tiara Johnson’s filings also include allegations about anonymous parties claiming to be able to shut down and reinstate accounts, who then use this supposed privilege to extort money from Instagram users. Such allegations may be familiar to others in the adult industry whose accounts have been disabled.
Shortly after Johnson’s account was suspended, Law360 reported, she was informed “that a John Doe was paid to have her account suspended or ‘bring her account down’ and after Facebook’s action, John Doe notified others.”
This anonymous broker allegedly “extorted $3,000 from Johnson before blocking Johnson without giving her access to the account. Shortly after, rival adult paraphernalia retailers began infringing Johnson’s mark all over Instagram, according to the complaint.”
