Blaker v. Netscout Systems

Published by Crandall Consulting · Informational litigation intelligence · Last substantive update: August 23, 2026

Docket / citation: Case 25STCV31283 · Filed: 2025-10-27

Summary

A Loeb & Loeb analysis describes a Los Angeles Superior Court decision in Blaker v. NetScout where the court dismissed a CIPA class action with prejudice, holding that the pen-register/trap-and-trace statutory provision does not reach ordinary website SDKs and tracking. The article contrasts that outcome with earlier cases where defendants engaged in highly technical defenses and lost ground.

Litigation Status

Status, direction, and weight describe how tracked public sources characterize this matter as of our last review — they are informational classifications, not legal assessments.

Procedural Posture

A California state court CIPA class action against NetScout alleging pen-register/trap-and-trace claims based on a third-party SDK was dismissed with prejudice at the trial-court level; plaintiffs were denied leave to amend.

Reported Holding

The Los Angeles Superior Court dismissed a CIPA class action with prejudice, concluding that the pen register/trap-and-trace provision (Cal. Penal Code § 638.51) does not reach standard website tracking SDKs and similar routine commercial web infrastructure.

What the Court Decided

The court accepted the defense's framing that the statute protects telephonic communication devices and does not extend to ordinary website tracking software (a third-party SDK in this case), and dismissed the case with prejudice, denying leave to amend.

What the Court Did Not Decide

The court did not adopt a rule about all forms of online data practices beyond the specific statutory interpretation at issue and the opinion, as described in the source, does not purport to resolve broader regulatory questions about commercial data collection; the source does not report whether any aspects of alternative factual scenarios were decided.

Significance

Generally viewed as defense-favorable. Characterizations of significance describe how the matter has generally been discussed in tracked public sources; individual holdings are often narrow, procedural, or fact-specific, and this page does not state or imply broader holdings than the sources support.

What This Page Does and Does Not Say

This page reports what our tracked public sources say about this matter — including, where identified, the procedural posture (for example, a ruling on a motion to dismiss is not a final merits decision). It does not report legal conclusions beyond those sources, does not predict outcomes, and does not constitute legal advice.

Technologies at Issue

• website SDK
• web analytics
• pixels
• website tracking technologies
• third-party website SDK
• device fingerprinting / browser fingerprinting
• IP address and routing metadata capture
• website analytics/tracking
• software development kit (SDK)
• analytics tools
• other website tracking tools
• network monitoring
• third-party tracking tools
• web pixels
• identity resolution tools
• session replay software
• website tracking
• third-party SDK
• website tracking software
• IP address collection
• device fingerprinting
• routing information

Third parties named or identified in tracked sources: NetScout Systems, Inc., X Corp. (f/k/a Twitter) (SDK supplier), NetScout Systems, third-party SDK vendor (unnamed), X Corp., Kochava, Jornaya.

Statutes Invoked

• Cal. Penal Code §§ 638.51, 638.52
• Cal. Penal Code §638.51
• California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA) — pen register and trap-and-trace provisions — all-party consent · private right of action
• California Invasion of Privacy Act (pen register and trap and trace provisions)
• California Penal Code § 638.51

Claims Asserted

Claims identified in tracked public sources; pleadings may include additional or amended claims.

• California Penal Code §638.51 (pen register / trap-and-trace claim under CIPA)
• CIPA pen-register claim
• CIPA trap-and-trace claim
• California Invasion of Privacy Act — pen register provision
• California Invasion of Privacy Act — trap and trace provision
• California Penal Code § 638.51 (CIPA pen register and trap-and-trace provisions, statutory damages up to $5,000 per violation as alleged)
• Pen register claim under Cal. Penal Code § 638.51
• Trap-and-trace device claim under Cal. Penal Code § 638.51
• Pen register/trap-and-trace claim under California Penal Code § 638.51 (CIPA)
• Class action CIPA allegations based on website SDK tracking

What This Matter May Mean for Website Operators

California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA) is an all-party consent statute with a private right of action. Consent standard and private enforceability are the structural features that most shape where website tracking claims are filed and how they are valued.

For operators using similar technologies, the recurring factual questions in matters like this one are when session recording begins relative to consent and whether input masking covers every field; whether advertising pixels transmit page URLs or hashed form data before a consent choice; what page URLs and query strings analytics tools share with third parties. Our scanner tests these behaviors empirically.

The reported outcome direction at the statutory interpretation stage reflects how tracked sources characterize the ruling; such rulings are often narrow, posture-specific, and fact-bound rather than broad statements of law.

Detection of a similar technology on a website is an informational risk indicator, not a legal conclusion, and nothing in this section is legal advice.

Related Intelligence

Sources

• CIPA WIN: California Superior Court Sustains Dismissal of Website Tracking Claims, Holding CIPA’s Pen Register Provisions Do Not Apply to Routine Web Analytics Technologies — CIPAWorld · Tier C (Professional analysis) · 2026-06-01
• Big Win for Companies Facing CIPA Website Tracking Lawsuits — Data Privacy + Cybersecurity Insider (Robinson+Cole) · Tier C (Professional analysis) · 2026-06-05
• A California Court Just Handed Website Operators a Win on CIPA — Mac Murray & Shuster LLP · Tier C (Professional analysis) · 2026-07-01
• CIPA WIN- California Superior Court Sustains Dismissal of Website Tracking Claims, Holding CIPA’s Pen Register Provisions Do Not Apply to Routine Web Analytics Technologies — The National Law Review · Tier C (Professional analysis) · 2026-06-01
• Decoding the Code: How Simple, Rigorously Accurate Advocacy May Have Broken the CIPA Litigation Impasse — Loeb & Loeb LLP · Tier C (Professional analysis) · 2026-06-10
• Blaker v. NetScout Systems — CIPA Case Deep‑Dive — ConsentPixel · Tier D (Industry data) · July 7, 2026
• Blaker V. NetScout Systems: A Narrow Reading Of The Pen Register And Trap And Trace Provisions Of The California Invasion Of Privacy Act In California State Court — MarketScreener / Acquiremedia · Tier E (General web) · 2026-07-30

About This Page

Publisher: Inspection-Ready Institute, Inc. (DBA Crandall Consulting), an independent website compliance and risk consultancy. We are not a law firm and nothing on this page is legal advice.

How this content is produced: Facts are extracted from publicly available sources — court and government materials, recognized legal press, professional analysis, and industry reports — by our litigation intelligence engine, stored with full source provenance, and rendered from the database. Risk guidelines are computed by a deterministic formula, never by an AI model directly. See the full methodology.

Limitations: Counts labeled "Tracked" reflect matters identified in our source set and are not official court statistics. We report what courts decided and did not decide; we do not predict outcomes.

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