hiQ Labs, Inc. v. LinkedIn Corp., 17-cv-03301 (N.D. Cal)
On August 14, a California Judge issued an order granting a preliminary injunction motion that will allow hiQ to continue to sell information gathered through LinkedIn’s publicly available profiles to its client businesses. hiQ generates information about a business’ workforce through analysis of employee’s profiles and then sells that information to employers. It offers two products to its clients: “Keeper” tells the employers which of their employees have the highest risk of being recruited by others; and “Skill Mapper” provides a summary of skills that individual workers have.
In May 2017, LinkedIn sent a letter demanding that hiQ cease and desist mining data from the networking site, noting that its user agreement prohibits various methods of data collection from its website. LinkedIn restricted hiQ’s company page and stated that any further access to LinkedIn’s data would violate state and federal law. hiQ filed a complaint after the parties were unable to reach an agreement asserting the right to access publicly available profiles.
LinkedIn is concerned that this type of unauthorized “data scraping” harms the site because it threatens the privacy of LinkedIn users. Some users have an interest in preventing employers or other parties from tracking profile updates. LinkedIn states that “over 50 million members have used a ‘Do Not Broadcast’ feature that prevents the site from notifying other users when a member makes profile changes.” LinkedIn argues that the potential for compromising privacy significantly harms both it and its users. However, in granting hiQ’s motion for preliminary injunction, the court notes that 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.” Marketing materials from LinkedIn to parties that subscribe to their Recruiter product to track other users inform potential customers “when they update their profile or celebrate a work anniversary, you’ll receive an update on your homepage. And don’t worry – they don’t know you’re following them.”
The Court granted hiQ’s motion for preliminary injunction and enjoined LinkedIn from preventing hiQ’s access, copying, or use of public profiles on LinkedIn’s website.