Intellectual Property Law

Facebook Allowed to Pursue Copyright Claims Against Service Which "Scraped" Facebook Pages in Violation of Terms of Use

The One Sentence Summary: A complaint alleging copyright infringement and other claims against a service that "scraped" content from Facebook pages was sufficient to survive a motion to dismiss.

What They Were Fighting About: Facebook sued defendants ("Power.com") for operating an internet site that collected user information from Facebook's website. Facebook alleged violation of the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing (?CAN-SPAM?) Act, 15 U.S.C. § 7701, et seq.; the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (?CFAA?), 18 U.S.C. § 1030 et seq.; and California Penal Code § 502. Facebook also alleged that Defendants committed direct and indirect copyright infringement when they made copies of Facebook?s website during the process of extracting user, and that the manner in which Power.com accessed the Facebook website constituted a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (?DMCA?), 17 U.S.C. § 1201, et seq. Facebook also asserted claims for relief based on state and federal trademark law, as well as a claim for relief under California?s Unfair Competition Law (?UCL?), Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code § 17200, et seq. Defendants filed a motion to dismiss the complaint.

District Court Holdings:

• The copyright infringement claims were pleaded with adequate detail. Access and copying of just one page in violation of the Terms of Service ("TOS") would be sufficient to commit copyright infringement.
• Although Facebook does not have a copyright on user content, copying the Facebook page to get user content may violate Facebook's rights. An arrangement of non-copyrighted data can be protected by copyright.
• The complaint stated claims for indirect copyright infringement by alleging that defendants caused users to violate the Terms of Use.
• The court refused to dismiss the DMCA claim despite defendant's argument that the users could authorize Power.com to access their Facebook data. Such access was explicitly barred by the Facebook Terms of Use.
• The complaint's allegations of trademark infringement were sufficient to withstand the motion to dismiss.
• The court ordered that plaintiffs must provide a more definite statement of the basis for their unfair competition law complaint.

Full post as published by IP Law Observer on June 12, 2009 (boomark / email).