The California Invasion of Privacy Act, commonly referred to as CIPA, is an older statute that is now being deployed aggressively in litigation challenging routine website tracking practices. Plaintiffs increasingly argue that common tracking technologies, including advertising pixels and certain analytics tools, function as prohibited “pen registers” or “trap and trace” devices under CIPA’s pen register provisions. A recent order from the United States District Court for the Southern District of California, Camplisson v. Adidas America, Inc. No. 25-cv-603, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 228012, 2025 WL 3228949 (S.D. Cal. Nov. 18, 2025), illustrates the direction of this litigation. In that case, the court denied a motion to dismiss a putative class action alleging that tracking pixels installed on a retail website constituted unlawful pen registers and trap-and-trace devices under CIPA.
