14 DAY TRIAL // Facebook is no stranger to lawsuits and, while many can be dismissed as frivolous, there are some of them that go into deeper issues. Facebook and Power.com have been engaged in a legal battle for almost a year now over the fact that Power.com scraped user data from the social network despite it explicitly forbidding such behavior. Facebook sued the company in December last year and Power.com countersued this summer to determine the social network to open up its data to third parties. To no avail it seems, as a US District Court has dismissed the case as being too vague in its claims and allegations.
Facebook was, expectantly, pleased with the outcome but said that the company's stance in the ongoing initial lawsuit held. “Our case against them continues with the one simple demand that they agree to protect user data and privacy by abiding by our terms of use — the same one that thousands of other developers use when integrating Facebook into their site,” Facebook said in a statement.
Power.com, on the other hand, saw this as a minor setback and believed that the decision was a “routine type of order,” common in the early states of the litigation process. The company is already planning for the next step and believes that, at that time, it will be much better prepared in its argument.
“The Court determined that Power’s pleading did not provide enough detail with respect to the fair use defense and other affirmative defenses, and also with respect to the counterclaims under the unfair competition laws. The Court gave Power 30 days, until November 21, 2009, to re-plead their defenses and counterclaims with more detail. Power intends to do so,” the company responded in a statement.
The Power.com service was launched in August 2008 and offered users a means of aggregating their profile information and other data from a variety of social networks and sites. The service used the APIs the sites provided where possible, but it also employed bots to scrape the data that wasn't otherwise available. This, though, meant that users had to enter their full credentials for the services on the site, something that Facebook took issue with, perhaps rightfully so. Facebook isn't exactly one of the most open social networks around, but it also has to look out for its users' security. The social network sued Power.com, which has since removed the Facebook functionality, in December 2008 and that lawsuit is still undergoing.