The scope of the tentative ruling won't be known until the judge issues a written order, but U.S. District Judge Ronald M. Whyte is expected to order Bidder's Edge (www.biddersedge.com) to stop drawing information from eBay's Web site. eBay (ebay) alleged in a suit filed in San Jose, Calif., that Bidder's Edge violated the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act by using information from eBay's auctions.
Bidder's Edge, of Burlington, Mass., is one of several so-called aggregators that combine and compare information listed on the sites of eBay, Yahoo! Inc. (yhoo), Amazon.com (amzn) and other auction operators. The company filed a counterclaim against eBay, alleging that it has used unfair business tactics and attempted to monopolize the online auction market.
"We are gratified that the court has indicated an intent to issue the injunction we requested and look forward to receiving the court's final ruling," said Jay Monahan, eBay's senior intellectual property counsel.
Legal scholars and intellectual-property lawyers said such a ruling could set new standards in the debate between what is considered publicly available information on the Internet and what is copyrighted data that companies can charge others to use.
"Decisions like this are disturbing because if extracting information off a site like eBay's is trespass, then it's going to be difficult for consumers to have the benefit of services that do price comparisons," said Pamela Samuelson, a professor at Boalt Hall Law School at the University of California, Berkeley.
Besides giving companies like eBay a new tool to protect themselves from aggregators, the ruling also has the potential to restrict companies such as Yahoo! that operate search engines, said Rich Gray, a Menlo Park, Calif., intellectual-property attorney.
But Daniel Bergeson, a partner at Bergeson & Eliopoulos LLP in San Jose, said eBay's argument is simple. "When you visit a site, you can't take that information and use it for your own purposes, especially for commercial purposes," he said.
Bidder's Edge officials didn't return calls for comment.
In a meeting with Whyte on Friday, eBay and Bidder's Edge agreed that eBay would post a bond payment of about $50,000 to cover any loss to Bidder's Edge if the court concludes the injunction was wrongfully issued. eBay said it expects a final ruling within two weeks.
