hiQ Labs, Inc. v. LinkedIn Corp.

LinkedIn Corporation (defendant) operated a professional networking website on which members posted job titles, resumes, and other information to their profiles. Members could specify the degree of privacy for their profiles, making them visible to the public or limiting visibility to all or some LinkedIn users. Data analytics company hiQ Labs, Incorporated (hiQ) (plaintiff) used automated bots to scrape information from publicly visible LinkedIn profiles. It then applied its proprietary algorithm to the information to obtain data analytics that it sold to commercial clients. In 2017, LinkedIn sent hiQ a cease-and-desist letter demanding that hiQ stop accessing data from LinkedIn’s server or else LinkedIn would sue hiQ for violating the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) and other state and federal laws. LinkedIn also stated that it was putting technical measures in place to prevent hiQ’s scraping. HiQ responded that it had a right to access the public pages and was not violating the CFAA. HiQ sued LinkedIn, seeking a declaratory judgment that its conduct did not violate the CFAA and an injunction preventing LinkedIn from blocking its access to public pages. HiQ moved for a preliminary injunction that would prevent LinkedIn from blocking access while trial was pending. The district court granted the preliminary injunction. The Ninth Circuit affirmed, reasoning that hiQ had raised a serious question regarding whether its conduct constituted accessing a protected computer without access under the CFAA. The United States Supreme Court, however, vacated the Ninth Circuit’s judgment and remanded the matter to the Ninth Circuit for reconsideration in light of new Supreme Court precedent.