Litigation involving the Wikimedia Foundation
In the United States, the Wikimedia Foundation typically wins defamation lawsuits brought against it due to protections that web platforms receive from laws like Section 230.
In May 2011, Louis Bacon, a hedge fund manager, obtained a court order in Great Britain, where he owned property, against the Wikimedia Foundation, The Denver Post and WordPress.com to compel them to reveal the identity of persons who he claimed had anonymously defamed him on Wikipedia and the other two websites.
[7] In January 2019, a court in Germany ruled against the Wikimedia Foundation, prompting it to remove part of the history and the allegedly defamatory content in the German Wikipedia about professor Alex Waibel.
[8][9] In 2021, Portuguese businessman Caesar DePaço sued the WMF over his article, demanding removal of information he found "defamatory", as well as mention of his donation to the far-right CHEGA party.
On 14 December 2005, his parents obtained a temporary restraining order prohibiting the Foundation from mentioning the full name on any website under the wikipedia.org domain.
[21][22] A French court dismissed the defamation and privacy case, ruling that the Foundation was not legally responsible for information in Wikipedia articles.
[21][22] In January 2008, Barbara Bauer, a literary agent, sued the Wikimedia Foundation in New Jersey Superior Court for defamation.
The Wikipedia article about ANI said the news agency had been accused of having served as a "propaganda tool" for the incumbent Indian government.
[43][44] In 2024, Tsai Eng-meng brought a civil lawsuit against Wikimedia Taiwan chapter after editors on Chinese Wikipedia reverted his edits relating to content that reflected his pro-China stance on the biographical article about himself.
Tsai believed that the content injured his reputation and personality rights, and filed the lawsuit to compel Wikimedia Taiwan to allow him to edit the article.
The lawsuit was dismissed in September 2024 after the court found that Wikimedia Taiwan had no control over Chinese Wikipedia and also did not prevent Tsai from editing.
