Microsoft-owned platform names a non-party in unrelated litigation, recasting independent findings as a competitor's vendetta
TALLINN, Estonia, July 1, 2026.
Teamfluence OÜ today responded to LinkedIn's motion filed this week in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Teamfluence is not a party to the case. LinkedIn's filing names the company anyway, and repeats a claim it has made before: that the BrowserGate research is retaliation by Teamfluence against LinkedIn's enforcement of its terms of service.
That is wrong on the facts, starting with who did the research.
BrowserGate is the work of Fairlinked e.V., a German nonprofit trade association, published at browsergate.eu. Fairlinked's researchers documented that LinkedIn scans visitors' browsers for thousands of installed extensions without consent or disclosure. The findings have been indepentently confirmed and LinkedIn doesn't deny the allegations.
That scanning is now the subject of a criminal complaint under review in Germany and pending regulatory complaints in the European Union. Teamfluence did not produce that research, did not publish it, and is not a plaintiff in the case.
Teamfluence is an Estonian software company whose product competes with LinkedIn Sales Navigator. And it does so completely legal.
Fairlinked e.V. is a separate nonprofit with members in more than 15 countries. Their only link is that Teamfluence's CEO is a founding member of Fairlinked. LinkedIn treats the two as one. By fusing a competitor with the nonprofit that exposed its scanning, LinkedIn recasts documented, independent findings as a rival's smear campaign, and drags a non-party into litigation it has no part in.
The one proceeding that does involve Teamfluence, in Munich (Landgericht München I, 37 O 104/26), concerns LinkedIn's suspension of Teamfluence's accounts, not the scanning. The court found that Teamfluence's use of data from users who authorized data export is permissible. It declined a preliminary injunction, and the decision is on appeal at the Oberlandesgericht München.
"It ties us to that research because it is easier to sell a story about a bitter competitor than to answer what its own users found.
"Fairlinked exposed the browser scanning. We didn't, and LinkedIn knows it," said Steven Morell, CEO of Teamfluence. "It ties us to that research because it is easier to sell a story about a bitter competitor than to answer what its own users found. LinkedIn has never had to face a real competitor to Sales Navigator, its estimated $1 billion product. Now it does, and instead of competing, it smears. We will win because we are the better tool."
Teamfluence continues to serve its customers and is assessing its legal options in response to LinkedIn's statements.