HiQ wins court round in accessing LinkedIn data
A federal judge Monday blocked LinkedIn Corp.’s efforts to prevent a San Francisco startup from using information gleaned from users’ profiles.
In granting HiQ Labs Inc.’s request for a preliminary injunction, U.S. District Judge Edward Chen said the company presented convincing arguments that LinkedIn’s primary motivation was to shut down a competitor rather than protect user privacy as the social media giant had claimed.
HiQ Labs makes software that analyzes data from public LinkedIn profiles to help employers determine which workers are likely to leave or stay. But Chen noted that LinkedIn, owned by Microsoft Corp., often sells user data to recruiters even though it accuses HiQ of violating consumer privacy.
“HiQ has raised serious questions as to whether LinkedIn, in blocking HiQ’s access to public data, possibly as a means of limiting competition, violates state law,” Chen wrote.
“LinkedIn’s professed privacy concerns are somewhat undermined by the fact that LinkedIn allows other third parties to access user data without its members’ knowledge or consent,” he wrote.
In recent years, Silicon Valley’s most powerful companies have been cracking down on firms they suspect of “data scraping,” the practice of extracting information from social media accounts or web-
sites such as Yelp or Wikipedia. LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook view scraping of the data generated by their users not just as theft — they sometimes charge to license data — but also as a violation of their users’ privacy.
In May, LinkedIn sent HiQ a letter demanding that it stop using LinkedIn data. HiQ argues that the data are already public. Without it, the company said, it will go under, an argument supported by Chen.
“HiQ unquestionably faces irreparable harm in the absence of an injunction, as it will likely be driven out of business,” Chen wrote.
There are big issues at stake about who ultimately controls information.
Data analytics has becoming a rapidly growing industry as companies seek ways to analyze large amounts of information so they can make smarter business decisions. Since Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn have collected an enormous amount of user data, they have sought to control access to it, even though that information is often public.
LinkedIn recruited Donald Verrilli, a former solicitor general for the Obama administration who has argued major cases before the Supreme Court. Famed Harvard law Professor Laurence Tribe is advising HiQ.
LinkedIn did not immediately return a request for comment. The company will now have to decide whether to reach some sort of agreement with HiQ or go to trial.