Payday Advance Plus v.
Findwhat - Click Fraud Lawsuit in the USA
At the direction of Findwhat,
Advertising allegedly hired people to conduct Internet searches through
Findwhat’s search engine using certain keywords that would trigger search
results and advertising listings. Advertising instructed these people to click
on certain advertising links from the search results, including Plaintiff’s
links, thereby causing Plaintiff Payday to incur PPC charges for each such
click. Also at the direction of Findwhat, Advertising used computer programs or
“bots” to click continuously and systematically on Payday’s advertising links to
increase the defendants’ revenues. These “bots” were able to “spoof” different
reference points on the Internet to make it appear that the clicks came from
different sources. These methods, which Payday calls “click fraud”, led Payday
to be charged for clicks that were not the result of genuine interest from
consumers or of genuine market activity.
Playday claimed six causes
of action, e.g. breach of contract, unjust enrichment, negligence and civil
conspiracy. Only the breach of contract claim survived the motion to dismiss.
"...Payday argues that an interpretation of the contract that would allow the
defendants deliberately to generate clicks on Payday’s site from users or “bots”
who plainly have no intention of making purchases should be disallowed because
it would violate the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing."
