Class-action lawsuit against Adobe pushed by 18 months

A verdict in the case between Stichting Data Bescherming Nederland (SDBN) and software company Adobe will be delayed for at least a year and a half.

In December 2023, the consumer interest organization SDBN launched a lawsuit against Adobe’s Experience Cloud, a platform that creates user profiles of internet users.

It has been collecting information like browsing and search history, but also intimate information like sexual preference and the desire to have children. This data was collected via tens of thousands of popular apps and websites that are used by many Dutch people, such as Marktplaats, Buienradar, Bol.com, and travel agency TUI.

Adobe uses the data to create personalized user profiles, which are then sold to commercial parties. In turn, they harvest this data to show targeted advertisements to internet users. All of this happened without consent, infringing the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Furthermore, the company installed tracking cookies without giving users the opportunity to refuse them. This is also a violation of the GDPR.

The Dutch foundation demanded that Adobe stop collecting and processing personal data of internet users, as well as a “suitable compensation” for damages on behalf of seven million Dutch consumers.

Adobe claimed that the SDBN’s claims are based on a misunderstanding of its technology and the role the company plays. Not Adobe, but rather Adobe’s customers who have a website or application, collect personal data of internet users. The American software company only processed this data.

The Court of Rotterdam argued on Wednesday that it must first determine whether the SDBN may bring these claims before coming to a ruling. Adobe says the foundation can’t do that because it hasn’t been ordered to seek damages from all of the people for whom it advocates. Adobe argues this goes against what the GDPR dictates.

The SDBN has an alternate interpretation of Europe’s privacy rules and wants to proceed with the class-action lawsuit.

The Court of Rotterdam wants to know what the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) thinks about this. In a lawsuit against Amazon, the court has announced that it will refer questions to the CJEU that deal with the same matter. Therefore, in the lawsuit against Adobe, the Dutch court is waiting for the answer to those questions. The court estimates that this will probably take a year and a half before they are answered.