Florida Court Rules That Company's Harvesting of Data on Rival Web Site Does Not Constitute Copyright Infringement

A US District Court in Florida has ruled that a Florida company's data harvesting of a rival company's web site does not constitute copyright infringement. The case was brought by Nautical Solutions Marketing (NSM), which owns and operates the Yachtbroker.com web site. NSM sought a declaration that its harvesting activities did not infringe the copyright of Boats.com, the operator and owner of a rival yacht listing web site, Yachtworld.com. The respondent Boats.com argued unsuccessfully that NSM's automated and manual data harvesting of Yachtworld.com infringed its copyrights. Boats.com failed to convince the Court that NSM's automated Boat Rover program, which operated on the Yachtbroker.com web site, constituted an infringement. Boat Rover is an Internet "spider" program that targets and searches public web sites, extracts specific facts, and then compiles the extracted facts into a searchable database accessible only by Yachtbroker.com users. In performing the extraction, Boat Rover momentarily copies the HTML of the web page containing the listing and then discards the HTML once the facts have been extracted and entered into the searchable database. In considering Boat Rover's momentary copying of Yachtworld.com's web pages, the Court ruled the activity constituted fair use. In support, the Court cited the recent California decision in Ticketmaster Corp. v. Tickets.com Inc., 2003 WL 21406289 (CD Cal, March 7, 2003). In the Ticketmaster case, the Court stated that "the temporary copy of electronic information for the limited purpose of extracting unprotected public facts leads to the conclusion that the temporary use of the electronic signals was "˜fair use' and not actionable." Boats.com argued additional copyright infringement claims which were also unsuccessful. Boats.com's argument that Yachtbroker.com copied the "look and feel" of a typical Yachtworld.com listing failed since the Court found that the pages were aesthetically and visually dissimilar. Moreover, any similarity between the two web sites derived from unprotectable elements. Lastly, the Court refused to find any infringement in the copying of the listings given that the yacht listings in Yachtbroker.com and Yachtworld.com were not virtually identical. For a copy of the case, Nautical Solutions Marketing Inc. f/k/a EBoating Marketing Group Inc v Boats.com, see: http://www.usedboats.com/newsletter/YachtBrokerWin.pdf. For more information, visit: http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/news/editorial/8395931.htm. Summary by: Colin Adams