hiQ Labs sued LinkedIn over access to scraped public profiles.
hiQ Labs was a small Silicon Valley data-analytics startup that used automated tools to collect information from publicly viewable LinkedIn profiles. It analyzed that data for customers, including services related to workforce and employee trends. In May 2017, LinkedIn sent hiQ a cease-and-desist letter and attempted to block its access.
hiQ responded by suing LinkedIn in federal court, seeking an injunction that would prevent LinkedIn from cutting off access to public profile data. The dispute raised a major question about whether the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act could treat scraping information from a publicly accessible website as unauthorized computer access.
A district court granted hiQ a preliminary injunction in 2017, and the Ninth Circuit upheld it in 2019. The Supreme Court later vacated that decision and sent the case back for reconsideration after its ruling in Van Buren v. United States. The Ninth Circuit reaffirmed its reasoning in 2022, although later proceedings found hiQ had breached LinkedIn’s user agreement and the parties settled.