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ARTICLE · 05 NOVEMBER 2019

Guilt-Free Web Scraping? Not So Fast

Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer LLP
Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer LLP
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Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer LLP

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Web scraping returned to center stage in the Sept. 9 Ninth Circuit decision that affirmed a preliminary injunction in favor of hiQ Labs, Inc., holding that LinkedIn...

United StatesIntellectual Property
Harry Rubin
Harry Rubin
Karolina Ebel
Karolina Ebel
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Web scraping returned to center stage in the Sept. 9 Ninth Circuit decision that affirmed a preliminary injunction in favor of hiQ Labs, Inc., holding that LinkedIn cannot prevent hiQ, a web scraping company, from harvesting data from publicly available LinkedIn profiles.

Overall, the Ninth Circuit's decision should not be taken as a green light to scraping. The decision was not a full review of the merits and scraping cases are very fact specific. The safest way to avoid scraping is to use technology, which identifies scrapers, blocks them, and alerts the website owner.

''Web scraping'' is the collection of data from computer servers through specialized software or ''robots.'' Such software simulates human web browsing to collect information from scraped websites. Collected data is either used by the scraper for internal purposes, to provide its services and products, or sold in one form or another to the scraper's clients.

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