Facebook's Litigation Against an Aggregator Provokes a Countersuit

The law suit launched in California by Facebook Inc (Facebook) against a social networking aggregator, Power.com, has apparently provoked Power Ventures Inc (carrying on business as Power.com) to retaliate by launching a countersuit in an attempt to place squarely in issue the question who owns data on social networking sites such as that of Facebook. Power.com is a social networking aggregator which allows users to log in to multiple social networking sites, such as Myspace, LinkdIn and Facebook, through a single portal and to manipulate features and data on those accounts. It claims to have over 5 million users in India and Brazil and launched its service in the US in November, 2008. In the original suit, Facebook asserted that Power.com's aggregating activities violated Facebook's rights in trade-mark and copyright, as well as being a breach of the CAN-SPAM Act, the DMCA and California's unfair competition legislation. In the countersuit, Power.com alleges that Facebook has also violated unfair competition laws, and, in addition, has unlawfully restrained trade and attempted to create a monopoly. Specifically, it contends that Facebook is attempting to prevent users from accessing their own data and that Facebook itself gives its own users such access to other sites such as Yahoo! And Gmail. The question of the ownership of user content on Facebook was raised indirectly when Facebook and many Facebook users were in conflict over Facebook's Terms of Service (see E-TIPS® "Change in Facebook Terms of Service Re User Content Causes Uproar", February 25, 2009, Vol 7, No 17). For a news article on the suits and countersuits, see: http://tinyurl.com/mp4w3r For the court file in Facebook sInc v Power Ventures Inc et al (US District Court for the Northern District of California, Case No C 08-5780), visit: http://www.scribd.com/doc/17311072/Power-Sues-Facebook Summary by: The Editor