by Dennis Crouch
I'm following a new cert petition that asks the Supreme Court to examine when web scraping becomes an improper means of obtaining trade secret information under the the DTSA. I regularly use web scraping for academic research, and so this case caught my attention for more than just the intellectual property curiosity.
- Rutstein v. Compulife Software, Inc., 24-634 (US) petition: 20241206162356526_Petition
- Website where the CEO of Compulife has ongoing commentary about Rutstein.
The specific question presented to the Supreme Court is "whether an action that is not unlawful under the federal Defend Trade Secrets Act ('DTSA') when performed manually by a human (or humans) is unlawful when performed by a computer robot." This framing presents a parallel to the seminal 1970 aerial photography case of E. I. duPont deNemours & Co. v. Christopher, 431 F.2d 1012 (5th Cir. 1970).
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