News > Geek > Wayback Machine is Sued

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WEDNESDAY JULY 13 2005 1:27 PM

Wayback Machine is Sued

Submitted by Dan76

Edited by Olivia

Most internet-savvy people are aware of Wayback Machine, the internet archive. The service saves expired web pages and domains. For example, here is the homepage for SG back in August 2002. Neato, huh?

Lawyers seem to be using it now as well to prove copyright infringement and trademark disputes. This tends to piss off corporations that infringe on copyright and trademarks. What to do? Sue Wayback Machine for copyright infringement!

Beyond its utility for Internet historians, the Web page database, searchable with a form called the Wayback Machine, is also routinely used by intellectual property lawyers to help learn, for example, when and how a trademark might have been historically used or violated.

That is what brought the Philadelphia law firm of Harding Earley Follmer & Frailey to the Wayback Machine two years ago. The firm was defending Health Advocate, a company in suburban Philadelphia that helps patients resolve health care and insurance disputes, against a trademark action brought by a similarly named competitor.

In preparing the case, representatives of Earley Follmer used the Wayback Machine to turn up old Web pages - some dating to 1999 - originally posted by the plaintiff, Healthcare Advocates of Philadelphia.

Last week Healthcare Advocates sued both the Harding Earley firm and the Internet Archive, saying the access to its old Web pages, stored in the Internet Archive's database, was unauthorized and illegal.

The lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in Philadelphia, seeks unspecified damages for copyright infringement and violations of two federal laws: the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

"The firm at issue professes to be expert in Internet law and intellectual property law," said Scott S. Christie, a lawyer at the Newark firm of McCarter & English, which is representing Healthcare Advocates. "You would think, of anyone, they would know better."

But John Earley, a member of the firm being sued, said he was not surprised by the action, because Healthcare Advocates had tried to amend similar charges to its original suit against Health Advocate, but the judge denied the motion. Mr. Earley called the action baseless, adding: "It's a rather strange one, too, because Wayback is used every day in trademark law. It's a common tool."

I wondered how long this would take. It should turn out to be an interesting case. I really look forward to hearing what the outcome is going to be.

Comments

waldo

I'm lost

June 2004

JUL 13, 2005 02:08 PM

So let me see. If I switch from IE to Firefox, and don't clear out my IE cache, looking at the old stuff in my IE cache is potentially illegal? I think I should be warned about this by any site I might look at; you know, with a popup or something of the sort.

ThisIsWhoWeAre

Oakland, CA

July 2004

JUL 13, 2005 02:13 PM

So it's unauthorized and illegal to hold on to something that a company put out to the public? How is that different from going back through a collection of old magazines to look at old print ads? Other than being easier to look through...

Cigarette

Cleveland, OH

April 2004

JUL 13, 2005 02:16 PM

ThisIsWhoWeAre said:
So it's unauthorized and illegal to hold on to something that a company put out to the public? How is that different from going back through a collection of old magazines to look at old print ads? Other than being easier to look through...

I suppose if you photocopied them and distributed them to the public without the getting consent from or reimbursing the magazine company, it'd be different. Not that I'm saying that the Wayback Machine is doing something wrong, I'm just saying it's hard to apply the same laws to both print and digital media. And maybe we need some new ones.

akl

Sacramento, CA

February 2004

JUL 13, 2005 02:52 PM

Ridiculous.

jake_lex

Lexington, KY

February 2003

JUL 13, 2005 03:14 PM

I just don't see this as any more of a copyright violation than a library keeping back issues of magazines and newspapers.

I also don't see any harm to the sites they are archiving. Clearly, if they're putting the site out on the public interweb, there's nothing sensitive there (and if you've got trade secrets on a publicly accessible web site, that's your problem), and the information on that site is of no use to you anymore anyway.

I can see this company winning the lawsuit, but getting only nominal damages.

Viola

SUICIDEGIRL

North Carolina, USA

JUL 13, 2005 04:47 PM

Cigarette said:
Not that I'm saying that the Wayback Machine is doing something wrong, I'm just saying it's hard to apply the same laws to both print and digital media. And maybe we need some new ones.

Well put, sir.

I know I say this kind of a lot, but everyone should read Free Culture.

filmnoir1

Los Angeles, CA

April 2004

JUL 13, 2005 06:38 PM

It is, of course, absurd - until (and I hope I am not giving any ideas to the lawyers here) somebody mention the Wayback Machine is copyrighted (the name) by Jay Ward's estate.

Remember Mr. Peabody and his boy, Sherman?

It was the gizmo that let them go back in the past and make bad puns.

EDIT TO CORRECT: Not copyrighted, trademarked.

[Edited on Jul 13, 2005 6:51PM]

harden

Germany

OLD SKOOL

JUL 14, 2005 03:58 AM

I remeber that SG design and I think I was a member already at that time. But I dont know if thats a good or a sad thing...

Thanks for that link to the webarchive.

_Elichrusos

Australia

November 2004

JUL 14, 2005 10:09 AM

For example, here is the homepage for SG back in August 2002. Neato, huh?

Whoa! Deja-Vue!

I wish I still had my old account.