With the second Trump Administration set to take power in January 2025, one can expect a pendulum swing in many aspects of technology policy. For example, while it is expected that President Trump will will continue efforts by the Biden Administration to limit China’s access to advanced semiconductor technology, the
CFPB Issues Final “Open Banking” Rule Governing Third Party Use of Consumer Banking Information
- Uses of lnformation Limited to “What is Reasonably Necessary”
- Use of Deidentified Data Not Within Scope
- Screen Scraping Survives
After a yearslong lead-up, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) published its final “open banking” rule in October. The rule effectuates the section of the Consumer Financial Protection Act, which charged
California Enacts Additional Generative AI Bills Touching on Training Data
After several weeks of handwringing about the fate of SB 1047 – the controversial AI safety bill that would have required developers of powerful AI models and entities providing the computing resources to train such models to put appropriate safeguards and policies into place to prevent critical harms – California
California Enacts Generative AI Law Addressing “Digital Replicas” of Performers
On September 17, 2024, Governor Gavin Newsom signed AB 2602 into California law (to be codified at Cal. Lab. Code §927). The law addresses the use of “digital replicas” of performers. As defined in the law, a digital replica is:
a computer-generated, highly realistic electronic representation that is readily identifiable
Court Rules That Scraping of Public Data by Competitor Constitutes Trade Secret Misappropriation
In an ongoing dispute commenced in 2016, the Eleventh Circuit for the second time in the lifetime of the litigation considered trade secret misappropriation and related copyright claims in a scraping case between direct competitors.
The case involved plaintiff Compulife Software, Inc. (“Plaintiff” or “Compulife”) – in the business of
California Court Issues Another Noteworthy Decision Dismissing Breach of Contract and Tort Claims in Web Scraping Dispute
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 alleged scraping of publicly available data from X for use in data products sold
Data At Issue: FTC Focus on Browsing Information and Location Data
Since the start of the year, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has brought actions against – and reached proposed settlements with[1] – three business ventures engaged in the collection, use and sharing of certain consumer information.
Web Publisher Seeks Injunctive Relief to Address Web Scraper’s Domain Name Maneuvers Intended to Avoid Court Order
Late last year, Chegg Inc. (“Chegg”), an online learning platform, obtained a preliminary injunction based on allegations that the various operators of the Homeworkify website (“Defendants”) – which allows users to view Chegg’s paywalled solutions without creating an account – violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). (Chegg
California Court Issues Noteworthy Decision on Breach of Contract Claims in Web Scraping Dispute
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 scraping of publicly-available data from Facebook and Instagram for use in data products sold to third
Another Web Scraping Dispute Focused on Travel Data
- Flight and travel data has always been valuable for data aggregators and online travel services and has prompted litigation over the years.
- Latest suit from Air Canada against a rewards travel search site raises some interesting liability issues under the CFAA.
- The implications of this case, if the plaintiffs are successful, could impact the legal analysis of web scraping in a variety of circumstances, including for the training of generative AI models.
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 by a major airline against an award travel search site that aggregates fare and award travel data. Air Canada alleges that Defendant Localhost LLC (“Localhost” or “Defendant”), operator of the Seats.aero website, unlawfully bypassed technical measures and violated Air Canada’s website terms when it scraped “vast amounts” of flight data without permission and purportedly caused slowdowns to Air Canada’s site and other problems. (Air Canada v. Localhost LLC, No. 23-01177 (D. Del. Filed Oct. 19, 2023)).[1]
The complaint alleges that Localhost harvested data from Air Canada’s site and systems to populate the seats.aero site, which claims to be “the fastest search engine for award travel.”
It also alleged that in addition to scraping the Air Canada website, Localhost engaged in “API scraping” by impersonating authorized requests to Air Canada’s application programming interface.