TCPA news: What isn’t an autodialer?

The saga of the definition of “autodialer” continues; this time, focusing on equipment with the capacity to “produce” telephone numbers to be called via a random or sequential number generator.  Here, we’ll take a look at a case out of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, where various business establishments used a software service to deliver text messages to customers.

In March 2022, a ruling from the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals considered the question of “whether an automated marketing system that sends promotional text messages to phone numbers randomly selected from a database of customers’ information is an automated telephone dialing system (an “Autodialer” [or ATDS]) under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (the “TCPA”).  The court of appeals agreed with the district court that it is not.

The appeal solely focused on the TCPA’s definition of “autodialer,” or ATDS.  As we have previously blogged, the TCPA’s statutory definition of an ATDS is:

“. . . equipment which has the capacity –

 

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