The Ninth Circuit’s Broad (and Wrong) Standards for Conversion–Taylor v. Google (Guest Blog Post)

by Kieran McCarthy Recently, there has been a revival of anemic trespass to chattels claims in California. And so perhaps we should not be surprised that California courts have opened the door to a resurgence in anemic digital conversion claims,…

Facebook Drops Anti-Scraping Lawsuit Against Bright Data (Guest Blog Post)

by guest blogger Kieran McCarthy There is a new most important legal precedent in the world of web scraping. Bright Data appears to have prevailed in its dispute against Meta. Last Friday, the parties stipulated to dismiss their lawsuit, with…

Think You Understand Online Trespass to Chattels Law? Think Again--In re Meta Healthcare Pixels

Think You Understand Online Trespass to Chattels Law? Think Again–In re Meta Healthcare Pixels

This is one of the many pending “Pixel” cases. If you don’t recall, a “pixel” is a 1×1-pixel image file that is imperceptible to web visitors. A website adds code to its web page that summons the pixel from a…

Game On! Bright Data Scores Major Victory in Web-Scraping Dispute with Meta (Guest Blog Post)

Game On! Bright Data Scores Major Victory in Web-Scraping Dispute with Meta (Guest Blog Post)

by guest blogger Kieran McCarthy Whether it is by accident or because of who he is, Judge Edward Chen of the Northern District of California has a way of finding himself at the center of the most important cases in…

Web Page Framing Isn't Trespass to Chattels--Best Carpet Values v. Google

Web Page Framing Isn’t Trespass to Chattels–Best Carpet Values v. Google

This case is an old-school turn-of-the-century throwback (and not the good kind). Google’s search app framed the web pages users visit, and the frame included ads. Some screenshots depicting the framing (the first image shows Google’s superimposed frame on the…

Should Copyright Preemption Moot Anti-Scraping TOS Terms? (Guest Blog Post)

by guest blogger Kieran McCarthy Many characterize the law of copyright preemption of contracts as a circuit split. But that undersells the level of inconsistency in courts’ interpretations of the law of copyright preemption. It’s not that half of federal…

Web Scraping for Me, But Not for Thee (Guest Blog Post)

Web Scraping for Me, But Not for Thee (Guest Blog Post)

by guest blogger Kieran McCarthy There are few, if any, legal domains where hypocrisy is as baked into the ecosystem as it is with web scraping. Some of the biggest companies on earth—including Meta and Microsoft—take aggressive, litigious approaches to…

Chegg Is Likely to Prevail on Its Anti-Scraping Contracts Claim...But Doesn't Get an Injunction--Chegg v. Doe (Guest Blog Post)

Chegg Is Likely to Prevail on Its Anti-Scraping Contracts Claim…But Doesn’t Get an Injunction–Chegg v. Doe (Guest Blog Post)

by guest blogger Kieran McCarthy Most web-scraping cases fit into one of two categories: Cases where companies are innovating with data in ways that data hosts/owners don’t like, and courts try to accommodate competing interests in accordance with prevailing legal…

Contractual Control over Information Goods after ML Genius v. Google (Guest Blog Post)

Contractual Control over Information Goods after ML Genius v. Google (Guest Blog Post)

by guest blogger Prof. Guy Rub, The Ohio State University Michael E. Moritz College of Law The copyright – contract tension Stewart Brand famously said that information wants to be free. We know, however, that many laws limit free access…

After hiQ Labs, Is Scraping Public Data Legal? (Guest Blog Post)

After hiQ Labs, Is Scraping Public Data Legal? (Guest Blog Post)

by guest blogger Kieran McCarthy Last year, the most important case in the history of web scraping—hiQ Labs, Inc. v. LinkedIn Corp.—settled. After two trips to the 9th Circuit, a remand from the Supreme Court, and nearly six years of…