Fidlar Technologies v. LPS Real Estate Data Solutions, Inc.

810 F.3d 1075, 2016 U.S. App. LEXIS 1029, 2016 WL 258632
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
DecidedJanuary 21, 2016
DocketNo. 15-1830
StatusPublished
Cited by27 cases

This text of 810 F.3d 1075 (Fidlar Technologies v. LPS Real Estate Data Solutions, Inc.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Fidlar Technologies v. LPS Real Estate Data Solutions, Inc., 810 F.3d 1075, 2016 U.S. App. LEXIS 1029, 2016 WL 258632 (7th Cir. 2016).

Opinion

FLAUM, Circuit Judge.

Fidlar Technologies (“Fidlar”) brings this action against LPS Real Estate Data Solutions, Inc. (“LPS”) for violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (“CFAA”) and the Illinois Computer Crime Preven[1077]*1077tion Law (“CCPL”). Fidlar claims that LPS improperly downloaded county land records provided through Fidlar’s services. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of LPS. It held that Fidlar failed to show that LPS acted with intent to defraud under CFAA § 1030(a)(4) or that LPS caused “damage” under § 1030(a)(5)(A). The court also rejected Fidlar’s argument that LPS knew or had reason to know that it might cause loss as required by the CCPL. For the following reasons, we affirm.

I. Background

Fidlar is a technology company that develops software for county offices to manage public land records. Fidlar’s software allows counties to digitize and index land records. Fidlar licenses its software to the counties, and the individual counties contract with users who want access to these land records.

One of Fidlar’s software products, Laredo, provides users with remote internet access to county records. The “Laredo system,” as Fidlar describes it, consists of three components: the county databases, the “Laredo client” (or just “the client”), and the “middle tier.” The county databases store county land records and index data. The “Laredo client” is a user-interface that allows users to remotely access these land records and related data. Finally, the “middle tier” facilitates the communication between the Laredo client and a specific county database. Fidlar offers its county customers the option of whether to host the county database and middle tier components on the county’s own servers or on Fidlar’s servers. The client is stored on the user’s own computer.

In order to use the client, a user must accept Fidlar’s End-User License Agreement (“EULA”). In relevant part, the EULA provides that a user may “use ... any portion of the software for any purpose,” but it also provides that a user may “not ... copy the software covered by this Agreement in any manner.” Importantly, the EULA specifies that it does not grant access to any county information. The authority to grant access to records remains with the relevant county.

When a user inputs a record search into the Laredo client, the client sends a request to the middle tier via the internet. The middle tier then retrieves the appropriate record from the county database and “streams” this record to the user through the Laredo client. In other words, the user can view an image of the record in the client, but cannot download or save it for later viewing. However, the client gives the user an option to “print” an image of the record, either on paper or to a PDF file.

The client communicates with the middle tier through a technology called Simple Object Access Protocol (“SOAP calls”). The Laredo client sends SOAP calls unencrypted over the internet. In order to access a particular record, the client generates the appropriate SOAP call and sends it to the middle tier. After analyzing the SOAP call, the middle tier retrieves the matching record and sends it back to the client for viewing. Each Laredo user has a unique username and password for each county, with which it has an agreement. Accordingly, each SOAP call is coded with a corresponding unique identifier.

Fidlar tracks access to county records in order to facilitate billing by the individual counties. Each county develops its own subscription plan for access to its records. All the subscription plans charge a monthly fee set by the county based on time spent accessing records. Some — but not all-^counties also charge a separate “print fee” (or “copy fee”) for each record a user [1078]*1078prints using the client. Fidlar also uses SOAP calls to track access and printing. For example, if a user prints a record from the client, the client generates and sends a SOAP call of the print request to the middle tier where it is logged for billing purposes.

LPS is a real estate data analytics company that used Laredo to gather real property data. LPS’s business requires a continuous acquisition of land records and data. It currently has agreements for access to public land records with approximately 2,600 counties nationwide. However, LPS is not interested in the land records themselves, but rather the data in these records.

To further its data collection efforts, in 2010, LPS contracted with 82 of Fidlar’s county customers to gain access to their land records. For each of these 82 counties, LPS agreed to pay the monthly fee for unlimited access to the county’s records. For those counties that charged separate print fees, LPS’s unlimited subscription did not include printing — if LPS printed a record from the client, it was still charged the applicable print fee. Fidlar was not a party to any of the contracts between LPS and the individual counties.

In 2011, LPS designed a “web-harvester,” a computer program to download county records en masse. To create the web-harvester, LPS ran a number of standard record searches and used a “traffic analyzer” to view the SOAP calls sent from the client to the middle tier. LPS then identified the SOAP calls necessary to retrieve records and developed its own client, the web-harvester, to emulate those SOAP calls and send them to the middle tier.1 LPS’s web-harvester only sent the SOAP calls necessary to retrieve records;

it did not send other SOAP calls, such as those that track a user’s activity. But every SOAP call did include LPS’s unique identifier assigned by each county.

Like the Laredo client, the web-harvester allowed LPS to search for and retrieve any record from the county databases it subscribed to. However, LPS’s web-harvester had three major differences from Fidlar’s Laredo client. First, the web-harvester allowed LPS to acquire records en masse rather than viewing or printing them one .at a time. Second, the web-harvester allowed LPS to download or save records, an option not available in the Laredo client. Third, LPS’s web-harvester did not send any tracking data at all and did not register any print fees, even if LPS downloaded or saved a record.

LPS used its web-harvester to obtain a large number of records from the 82 county databases it subscribed to over approximately two years. It downloaded the records in bulk onto its computers and then sent the records to India. There, select data from the records were “keyed,” or entered, into LPS’s database. Throughout this period, LPS continued to pay for unlimited subscriptions in all 82 counties but did not incur (or pay) print fees for all of the records it acquired through its web-harvester. Indeed, essentially none of LPS’s activities were tracked during this period. Nonetheless, LPS’s web-harvester did not disrupt Fidlar’s services to other users or alter any content in the middle tier or county databases.

In 2012, Fidlar received a message from one of its county customers noting that LPS was paying subscription fees but was not logging any time used. In early 2013, Fidlar decided to investigate LPS. Based [1079]*1079on server logs, Fidlar concluded that LPS was using a web-harvester instead of the Laredo client to obtain records.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
810 F.3d 1075, 2016 U.S. App. LEXIS 1029, 2016 WL 258632, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/fidlar-technologies-v-lps-real-estate-data-solutions-inc-ca7-2016.