Supreme Court Affirmatively Requests Response In Fight Over Data Scraping

The U.S. Supreme Court is requesting that startup hiQ Labs Inc. respond to LinkedIn's request for intervention of a ruling in the Ninth Circuit. In its petition for writ of certiorari filed in March, LinkedIn claimed that hiQ has been violating federal antitrust laws by scraping data from LinkedIn's publically available pages, and selling that data back to employers. The Ninth Circuit's ruling held that LinkedIn cannot invoke the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, as the information on LinkedIn is able to be accessed without logging onto the site. In its request for review, LinkedIn argued that the Ninth Circuit's ruling will affect users' ability to control who accesses and uses their data.