3Taps, Inc. v. Linkedin Corporation
- Edward Chen
- 3:18-cv-00855
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 10
In 3Taps v. LinkedIn, Judge Chen denied LinkedIn’s motion to dismiss, finding 3Taps plausibly alleged a present dispute over planned public-data scraping.
3Taps, Inc. may continue pursuing its declaratory-judgment claims against LinkedIn Corporation. The ruling allows the case to proceed past LinkedIn’s challenge based on standing, ripeness, and the court’s discretion to decline declaratory relief; it does not decide the legality of the planned scraping.
What happened
3Taps sued LinkedIn seeking a court declaration that accessing and using publicly available LinkedIn data would not violate federal computer-fraud law, a California computer-data law, contract law, or trespass law. LinkedIn argued that 3Taps lacked a sufficiently immediate dispute because LinkedIn had not threatened litigation and 3Taps was not genuinely prepared to scrape data.
The court found that LinkedIn’s warning that 3Taps had no authorization to access LinkedIn’s website and servers, together with LinkedIn’s ongoing opposition to public-data scraping, showed a real threat of injury. The court also found that 3Taps had plausibly alleged it had software capable of scraping LinkedIn profiles and a potential business customer, GlobaliD.
Judge Chen denied LinkedIn’s motion to dismiss and declined to dismiss the declaratory-judgment claims on the ground that 3Taps had supposedly manufactured the case to obtain a particular judge. The order did not decide whether 3Taps’s planned scraping would actually violate any law or legal obligation.
The detailed version
- 3Taps, Inc. v. Linkedin Corporation · No. 3:18-cv-00855
- Edward Chen
- Nov. 15, 2022
Background
3Taps operates a data-scraping business that collects information and makes it available to third-party technology developers. It planned to scrape publicly available information from LinkedIn and provide that data to third parties, including under a proposed arrangement with GlobaliD. LinkedIn’s user agreement prohibits unauthorized scraping, and LinkedIn maintains a team that works to prevent scraping on its platform.
After 3Taps notified LinkedIn that it intended to begin scraping publicly available LinkedIn data, LinkedIn responded that further access would be unauthorized. LinkedIn also said it did not intend to consider legal action concerning 3Taps’s letter until the Ninth Circuit resolved an appeal in related litigation. 3Taps then filed this action seeking declarations that its planned conduct would not violate the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, California’s Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act, contract law, or trespass law.
The court had previously dismissed 3Taps’s first amended complaint under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(1), which concerns the court’s subject-matter jurisdiction, but allowed 3Taps to amend. The second amended complaint added allegations about 3Taps’s ability to scrape LinkedIn data and its potential customer, GlobaliD. LinkedIn again moved to dismiss, arguing that 3Taps lacked standing and that the dispute was not ripe. Standing asks whether the plaintiff has a legally sufficient injury that the court can address; ripeness asks whether the dispute is concrete enough for judicial resolution.
Court’s Analysis
The court applied a framework requiring a declaratory-judgment plaintiff to allege both an affirmative act related to enforcement of the defendant’s rights and meaningful preparation to engage in potentially unlawful conduct.
Affirmative act and threatened injury. The court rejected LinkedIn’s argument that it had taken no affirmative action against 3Taps. LinkedIn had expressly stated that 3Taps had no authorization to access LinkedIn’s website and servers. The court also considered LinkedIn’s continuing litigation and position that the federal computer-fraud law applies to publicly available information. Taken together, those circumstances demonstrated a real threat of injury and supported an actual controversy suitable for a declaratory judgment.
Meaningful preparation. The court found that 3Taps plausibly alleged meaningful preparation to scrape LinkedIn data. 3Taps alleged that it had software that mimics an internet browser, accesses LinkedIn users’ account pages, captures the pages’ contents, and categorizes information such as names, locations, education, awards, and employment history. The court held that the condition of 3Taps’s website did not by itself prove that 3Taps lacked the capacity or preparation to use and sell scraped data.
The court also found the alleged relationship with GlobaliD plausible despite LinkedIn’s argument that the relationship was not genuine because the companies shared an investor and executive officer. The complaint described GlobaliD’s identity-verification business and alleged a business purpose for using scraped LinkedIn information. At the motion-to-dismiss stage, the court accepted those allegations as true for purposes of the analysis.
Discretion to decline declaratory relief. LinkedIn separately asked the court to decline to hear 3Taps’s declaratory-judgment claims, arguing that 3Taps had manufactured the lawsuit to obtain assignment to Judge Chen rather than Judge Breyer, who had previously issued an injunction involving 3Taps and scraping Craigslist. The court held that the allegations did not establish that 3Taps had manufactured this lawsuit to circumvent that injunction, particularly because the earlier case involved a different opposing party.
Disposition
The court DENIED LinkedIn’s motion to dismiss. The order states that it disposes of Docket Nos. 76, 85, and 87. The court also GRANTED the stipulated motion to unseal the second amended complaint and directed 3Taps to publicly file it within a week after the order issued. The court did not decide whether 3Taps’s proposed scraping would violate the federal computer-fraud law, California law, a contract, or trespass principles.
Read the full 10-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.