In a 27-page decision, District Judge Lucy Koh, of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, ruled that LinkedIn cannot be sued under the SCA because the company is neither a remote computing service (RCS) nor an electronic communication service (ECS).

"The SCA only creates liability for a provider that is an RCS or an ECS," Koh said in her ruling. LinkedIn is neither and therefore did not violate the SCA, she noted.

News of the ruling in the case was first reported by legal blog

LinkedIn user Kevin Low filed the lawsuit in March 2011 on behalf of all users of the professional social networking service. Low alleged that LinkedIn violated his privacy rights under the SCA when the company illegally transmitted his personally identifiable browsing history to advertisers, Internet marketing companies, data brokers and web tracking companies.

Low claimed that LinkedIn's user tracking was different from the mostly anonymous tracking done by other Internet companies. "LinkedIn associates its users unique identifiers with the cookies and beacons that are the keys to their browsing history," Low alleged in his complaint. "LinkedIn thus puts a name to browsing histories that would otherwise be anonymous, thereby exploiting its users' personal information for commercial profit."