On May 9, 2024, a California district court dismissed, with leave to amend, the complaint brought by social media platform X Corp. (formerly Twitter) against data provider Bright Data Ltd. (“Bright Data”) over Bright Data’s...more
On January 23, 2024, a California district court released its opinion in a closely-watched scraping dispute between the social media platform Meta and data provider Bright Data Ltd. (“Bright Data”) over Bright Data’s alleged...more
In a recent post, we recounted the myriad of issues raised by recently-filed data scraping suits involving job listings, company reviews and employment data. Soon after, another interesting scraping suit was filed, this time...more
11/17/2023
/ Air Canada ,
Artificial Intelligence ,
Breach of Contract ,
Cease and Desist Orders ,
Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) ,
Copyright ,
Injunctive Relief ,
Lanham Act ,
Online Travel Vendors ,
SCOTUS ,
Travel ,
Van Buren v United States ,
Web Scraping
In recent years there has been a great demand for information about job listings, company reviews and employment data. Recruiters, consultants, analysts and employment-related service providers, amongst others, are...more
10/20/2023
/ Artificial Intelligence ,
Breach of Contract ,
Cease and Desist Orders ,
Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) ,
Consultants ,
Copyright ,
Damages ,
DMCA ,
Injunctive Relief ,
Job Ads ,
LinkedIn ,
Online Reviews ,
Unfair Competition ,
Web Scraping
UPDATE: On December 8, 2022, the court issued an order granting the Consent Judgment and Permanent Injunction.
On December 6, 2022, the parties in the long-running litigation between now-defunct data analytics company hiQ...more
12/9/2022
/ Breach of Contract ,
Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) ,
Corporate Counsel ,
Damages ,
hiQ Labs Inc v LinkedIn Corp ,
LinkedIn ,
Misappropriation ,
Permanent Injunctions ,
SCOTUS ,
Settlement Agreements ,
User Agreements ,
Vacated ,
Web Scraping
On November 4, 2022, a California district court took up the parties cross-motions for summary judgment in the long-running scraping litigation involving social media site LinkedIn Corp.’s (“LinkedIn”) challenge to data...more
In today’s digital age, the question isn’t whether there is open source software being used in a company’s products, but how it is being used and what license governs its use. Open source is ubiquitous. Despite its...more
10/27/2021
/ Breach of Contract ,
Contract Terms ,
General Public Licenses ,
Intellectual Property Protection ,
Open Source Software ,
Right to Repair ,
Smart Devices ,
Software ,
Software Developers ,
Software Licenses ,
Source Code ,
Television ,
VIZIO
On September 30, 2021, a Texas district court granted Southwest Airline Co.’s (“Southwest”) request for a preliminary injunction against online travel site Kiwi.com, Inc. (“Kiwi”), barring Kiwi from, among other things,...more
10/4/2021
/ Airlines ,
Aviation Industry ,
Breach of Contract ,
Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) ,
Contract Terms ,
Data Collection ,
Likelihood of Success ,
Online Platforms ,
Preliminary Injunctions ,
Southwest Airlines ,
Terms and Conditions ,
Unauthorized Access ,
Web Scraping
On January 14, 2021, Southwest Airlines Co. (“Southwest”) filed a complaint in a Texas district court against an online travel site, Kiwi.com, Inc. (“Kiwi”), alleging, among other things, that Kiwi’s scraping of fare...more
In continuing its efforts to enforce its terms and policies against developers that engage in unauthorized scraping of user data, this week Facebook brought suit against two marketing analytics firms, BrandTotal Ltd...more
In continuing its push to enforce its terms and policies against developers that engage in unauthorized collection or scraping of user data, Facebook brought suit last month against mobile marketing and data analytics firm...more
3/10/2020
/ Breach of Contract ,
Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) ,
Corporate Counsel ,
Data Collection ,
Facebook ,
Personal Information ,
Popular ,
Public Disclosure ,
Social Media ,
Terms of Use ,
Unauthorized Access ,
Web Scraping
The ink is barely dry on the landmark Ninth Circuit hiQ Labs decision. Yet, a new dispute has already cropped up testing the bounds of the CFAA and the ability of a platform to enforce terms restricting unauthorized scraping...more
9/30/2019
/ Breach of Contract ,
Cease and Desist ,
Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) ,
Corporate Counsel ,
Facebook ,
Injunctive Relief ,
LinkedIn ,
Preliminary Injunctions ,
Public Disclosure ,
Revocation ,
Terms of Use ,
Unauthorized Access ,
Web Scraping
Two recent web scraping disputes highlight some important issues regarding whether a website owner may successfully allege a breach of contract action against a commercial party that has scraped website content contrary to...more
7/11/2019
/ Actual or Constructive Knowledge ,
Breach of Contract ,
Browsewrap Agreement ,
Cease and Desist ,
Clickwrap Agreements ,
Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) ,
Forum Selection ,
Lanham Act ,
Permanent Injunctions ,
State Law Claims ,
Terms of Use ,
Unauthorized Access ,
Unfair Competition ,
Web Scraping ,
Website Owner Liability ,
Websites
This month, an Illinois district court considered another in the series of web scraping disputes that have been working their way through our courts. In this dispute, CouponCabin, Inc. v. PriceTrace, LLC, No. 18-7525 (N.D....more
A recent dispute between an advertiser AXTS Inc. (“AXTS”) and a video production company GY6vids (“GY6”) produced an interesting issue involving the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) – that is, whether an entity...more
On Friday, the WSJ published an article detailing how companies are monetizing smartphone location data by selling it to hedge fund clients. The data vendor featured in the WSJ article obtains geolocation data from about...more
11/7/2018
/ Anti-Fraud Provisions ,
Breach of Contract ,
Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) ,
Cybersecurity ,
Data Collection ,
Data Protection ,
Electronic Communications ,
Fund Managers ,
Material Nonpublic Information ,
Personally Identifiable Information ,
Popular ,
Smartphones
A D.C. district court ruled that an eBay user did not assent to a later-added arbitration clause to the user agreement by virtue of a provision that stated eBay could amend the agreement at any time, as the user may not have...more
This past week, an Illinois district court dismissed, with leave to amend, claims relating to a competitor’s alleged scraping of sales listings from a company’s website for use on its own site. (Alan Ross Machinery Corp. v....more
Such Scraping “Plausibly Falls within the Ambit of the First Amendment”
The Ninth Circuit is currently considering the appeal of the landmark hiQ decision, where a lower court had granted an injunction that limited the...more
5/1/2018
/ Breach of Contract ,
Cease and Desist ,
Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) ,
Constitutional Challenges ,
Cyber Crimes ,
Data Collection ,
DMCA ,
First Amendment ,
Free Speech ,
Privacy Policy ,
Terms of Use ,
Web Scraping ,
Websites
Earlier this month, the Ninth Circuit issued a noteworthy ruling in a dispute between an enterprise software licensor and a third-party support provider. The case is particularly important as it addresses the common practice...more
1/25/2018
/ Breach of Contract ,
Browsewrap Agreement ,
Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) ,
Copyright ,
Copyright Infringement ,
Corporate Counsel ,
Social Media ,
Terms of Use ,
Unauthorized Access ,
Web Scraping ,
Websites
Court Issues Injunction Barring Blocking of Scraping and Holds CFAA Likely Doesn’t Apply -
Websites make information available to clients, users, customers and subscribers. Data aggregators, investors, competitors and...more
8/29/2017
/ Breach of Contract ,
Cease and Desist ,
Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) ,
Injunctive Relief ,
LinkedIn ,
Preliminary Injunctions ,
Public Disclosure ,
Revocation ,
Terms of Use ,
Unauthorized Access ,
Web Scraping
Craigslist has used a variety of technological and legal methods to prevent unauthorized parties from violating its terms of use by scraping, linking to, or accessing user postings for their own commercial purposes. For...more
8/25/2017
/ Breach of Contract ,
CAN-SPAM Act ,
Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) ,
Craigslist ,
Data Collection ,
LinkedIn ,
Permanent Injunctions ,
Software Developers ,
Solicitation ,
Terms of Use ,
Web Scraping ,
Websites
For years, craigslist has aggressively used technological and legal methods to prevent unauthorized parties from violating its terms of use by scraping, linking to or accessing user postings for their own commercial purposes....more
For years, craigslist has aggressively used technological and legal methods to prevent unauthorized parties from scraping, linking to or accessing user postings for their own commercial purposes. In a prior post, we briefly...more
6/2/2016
/ APIs ,
Breach of Contract ,
CAN-SPAM Act ,
Cease and Desist ,
Compensatory Damages ,
Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) ,
Content Aggregators ,
Copyright Infringement ,
Craigslist ,
Injunctive Relief ,
Unfair Competition
Operators of public-facing websites are typically concerned about the unauthorized, technology-based extraction of large volumes of information from their sites, often by competitors or others in related businesses. The...more