Microsoft LinkedIn loses its appeal for access to user profiles By Reuters

By Jonathan Stempel

(Reuters) – A federal court of appeal on Monday dismissed LinkedIn's efforts to prevent a San Francisco company from using information deemed public by users of the professional networking website.

The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the preliminary injunction of August 2017 requiring that LinkedIn, a Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ 🙂 unit with more than 645 million members, to allow hiQ Labs Inc. to access publicly available member profiles.

The San Francisco Court of Appeal's 3-0 decision delays the Silicon Valley battle against "scraping data," or extracting information from social media accounts or websites, which, according to the criticism, can be assimilated to the theft or to infringe on the privacy of the users.

Marsha Berzon, Circuit Judge, said that hiQ, a software program that allows employers to determine whether employees remain or not, said that he was facing irreparable harm in the absence of any "employee". injunction, because it could close its doors without access.

She also said that giving companies such as LinkedIn the freedom to choose public data users could create "information monopolies" detrimental to the public interest.

"LinkedIn has no proprietary interest protected in the data provided by its users, as users retain ownership of their profiles," wrote Berzon. "And with respect to publicly available profiles, users obviously want others to access them," including potential employers.

In a statement, LinkedIn said it was disappointed with the decision and the assessment of its options, and will "fight to protect our members and the information they entrust to them".

HiQ's lawyers did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The case was referred to Judge Edward Chen of the US District in San Francisco, who issued the injunction.

Craigslist, the classifieds website, had supported LinkedIn's call, warning that the injunction could have a "dangerous impact" by allowing "bad actors" to more easily find targets for marketing by email, text or phone not desired.

Berzon, however, indicated that hiQ had raised serious questions about LinkedIn's conduct, including whether it could rely on a federal law against fraud and computer abuse to prevent "illegal users" from entering Canada. access user data.

"Of course, LinkedIn could answer its concern of" free passenger "by removing the option of public access, even if it has a cost for the preferences of many users and possibly for its own results" she wrote.

Gregory Garre, former Solicitor General of the United States under President George W. Bush, representative of Craigslist, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Donald Verrilli, Solicitor General of President Barack Obama, represented LinkedIn. Laurence Tribe, a professor at Harvard Law School, was one of hiQ's lawyers.

The case is hiQ Labs Inc c. LinkedIn Corp (NYSE :), 9th Circuit Court of Appeal, No. 17-16783.