Facts

PeopleConnect collects yearbooks, and then scans and extracts the information from the yearbooks, putting the information into a database. Through its website, Classmates.com, it thereafter sells reprinted yearbooks and also a subscription membership to access certain information.

On August 4, 2022, Wayne Tseng joined a lawsuit filed by Meredith Callahan and Lawrence Abraham against PeopleConnect. When PeopleConnect moved judgment on the pleadings against Tseng, who by then was the sole plaintiff, the court converted PeopleConnect's motion to one for summary judgment. Tseng sought to represent a class of individuals who, he argued, had been harmed by PeopleConnect's actions in putting up their images on its website.

PLAINTIFF'S CONTENTIONS: Plaintiff contended that defendant's non-consensual, commercial use of his likeness violated Califorrnia's Right of Publicity statute, Unfair Competition Law, intrusion upon seclusion, and unjust enrichment. Specifically, plaintiff explained that on defendant's website, users may search for him and a low-resolution image from his high school yearbook, would appear. However, registering on defendant's website with allow the user to view the full-size yearbook, and defendant would also solicit paid subscriptions to its site. According to plaintiff, defendant's actions harmed those whose images had been posted by, among others, infringing their intellectual property without compensation while also being unjustly enriched in the process.

DEFENDANT'S CONTENTIONS: Defendant contended that plaintiff's claims were untimely under applicable two-year statute of limitations; plaintiff's images were added to defendant's on-line library and became publicly accessible on June 14, 2014, more than five years prior to the complaint or amended complaint.

Result

The court agreed that plaintiff's actions were time-barred: thus, having converted the motion to one for summary judgment, granted it.