A US court has ruled that a database builder who had been authorised by a client to scrape the client's web site on a database built for it by a previous supplier may have been infringing copyright, database rights, trespassing, hacking and breaching the web site's terms of use. Snap-on had built a parts database for Mitsubishi to enable dealers to access spare parts. Mitsubishi later moved that work to O'Neil. Mitsubishi saw the database that Snap-on had created as belonging to it and it authorised O'Neil to scrape the database to enable Mitsubishi to continue using the data with its suppliers. To access Snap-on's systems to do the scraping, Mitsubishi gave O'Neil logon details. The scraping caused Snap-on's site to crash. Snap-on sued and the Ohio court said that the case must proceed to a full trial.
Paul Gershlick, a Partner at Matthew Arnold & Baldwin LLP and editor of www.Upload-IT.com , comments: 'This case does not directly affect the UK. However, any case involving the rights and wrongs of web site scraping is interesting because there have been so few of them. Many people, particularly search engines and comparison web sites, scrape other people's sites. They run a risk of being sued, but the law is not 100% certain in this area as many sites don't want to have the negative PR of be seen to challenge people's access to their sites. In Europe, though, Ryanair has been throwing its weight about to try to stop online travel agents from scraping its site which it says contravenes its site terms of use, but there is as yet no definitive ruling that is binding on England.'
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