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U.S.: Federal judge tosses out antitrust case against Facebook

By  |  November 30, 2012

A federal judge has tossed out a case against Facebook alleging the social network company broke antitrust law by banning its users from using a product that changes the layout of a Facebook page and swaps out advertisements. U.S. District Judge Cathy Ann Bencivengo threw out the case first initiated by Sambreel, an advertising company that offers products that allow such modifications of a Facebook page through its programs like PageRage. In response to the software, Facebook told its users that they could not log into Facebook unless they disabled RagePage; such was the source of Sambreel’s antitrust suit. Judge Bencivengo justified tossing out the case by saying “[t]here is no fundamental right to use Facebook.” Experts say that the judge’s siding with Facebook may have, in part, been due to Sambreel’s tactics in getting people to use its programs, essentially tricking them into downloading the software.

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