Volume II

Issue : 13: June 24, 2004

• Canadian Spammer Settles CAN-SPAM Lawsuit
• Extracting and Posting Website Facts Not Copyright Infringement
• Federal Court Overturns Privacy Commissioners Finding in Video Surveillance Case
• US Court Says No to Employment Notification Sent via Email
• EC Releases Consultation Paper on Regulation of VoIP - U.S. Justice Department seeks Regulation of VoIP to Facilitate Police Surveillance
• Zero-Knowledge Initiates Copyright Suit Against IBM
• French Court Fines AOL for Abusive and Illegal Contracts
• U.S. Appeals Court Finds No Civil Liability for Mere Possession of Pirate Access Devices
• ISPs Not Liable for Copyright Infringement for Storing Data

Home > Volume II > Issue 13: June 24, 2004 > Extracting and Posting Website Facts Not Copyright Infringement

Extracting and Posting Website Facts Not Copyright Infringement

U.S. District Court (Middle District Fla.) holds that it is not an infringement of copyright but a fair use to temporarily copy the hypertext mark up language (HTML) code of a competitor's website to extract factual information for reposting on a competitive website.

Boats.com operated Yachtworld.com, a website which allows subscribing brokers to post listings of yachts for sale. Nautical Solutions Marketing ("NSM") launched a competing website, Yachtbroker.com. Boats.com alleged information cited on NSM's Yachtbroker.com was copied directly from Yachtworld.com and therefore constituted copyright infringement.

Boats.com alleged that two services offered by Yachtbroker.com infringed Boats.com copyright. First, NSM used an Internet "spider" named "Boat Rover" to search and extract facts from the publicly accessible yacht listings on Yachtworld.com. These extracted facts were then listed on Yachtworld.com's public listings. Second, Yachtbroker.com offered a "valet service" which, with the permission of the broker, allowed Yachtbroker.com to move, delete or modify a broker's listing on another website. As a result of this valet service, Yachtbroker.com copied and pasted reformatted content from the Yachtworld.com site, including yacht photos and descriptions, on the Yachtbroker.com site.

Judge Merryday held that the "momentary copying" which occurred when Boat Rover was used to extract fact listings from Yachtworld.com was "fair use of a copyrighted work" and did not constitute copyright infringement. With respect to the valet service, the judge concluded the copyright subsisting in the yacht pictures and descriptions belonged to the boat brokers and not Yachtworld.com. Further, the headings used in the yacht listings on Yachtworld.com were not protected by copyright law as the "headings merge with the idea of listing a yacht for sale". The arguments that copyright in the "look and feel" of the Yachtworld.com site or the copyright in the compilation of the yacht listings had been infringed were also dismissed. The format of the yacht listings on Yachtworld.com and Yachtbroker.com differed substantially as a result of different layouts, colour schemes and general "look and feel" of the sites.

For a copy of the case, visit:

http://pub.bna.com/ctlr/802cv760.pdf