Court decision · 18 April 2022
hiQ Labs, Inc. v. LinkedIn Corp.
31 F.4th 1180 (9th Cir. 2022) · U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
Limited by later decisions. The district court later found hiQ breached LinkedIn's User Agreement; the case settled in 2022.
What it means for your code
Scraping public pages is unlikely to be criminal under the CFAA, but contract (ToS), anti-circumvention and privacy law still apply, especially if you log in or evade blocks.
What happened
hiQ scraped public LinkedIn profiles to build workforce analytics; LinkedIn sent a cease-and-desist and blocked it. On remand from the Supreme Court the Ninth Circuit again considered a preliminary injunction.
What was decided
Scraping data that is publicly accessible without authentication likely does not access a computer 'without authorization' under the CFAA. Later proceedings found hiQ liable for breach of LinkedIn's User Agreement before the case settled.
The legal test applied
- Accessing publicly available data that requires no authentication is likely not 'without authorization' under the CFAA
What would have changed the outcome
- Logged-in scraping, fake accounts or breach of terms create contract liability, as later found against hiQ
Summary and analysis by Lawpatch, checked by an editor against the source. Risk analysis, not legal advice; the law may have moved on since this decision.