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

82 F. Supp. 3d 844, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 27170, 2015 WL 1059007
CourtDistrict Court, C.D. Illinois
DecidedMarch 5, 2015
DocketCase No. 4:13-cv-4021-SLD-JEH
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 82 F. Supp. 3d 844 (Fidlar Technologies v. LPS Real Estate Data Solutions, Inc.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, C.D. Illinois 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., 82 F. Supp. 3d 844, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 27170, 2015 WL 1059007 (C.D. Ill. 2015).

Opinion

ORDER

SARA DARROW, UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE

Fidlar Technologies (“Fidlar”) sued LPS Real Estate Data Solutions, Inc. (“LPS”) under the civil-suit provision of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (“CFAA”), 18 U.S.C. § 1030(g), and under the civil-suit provision the Illinois Computer Crime Prevention Law (“CCPL”), 720 ILCS 5/17-51 (2011). Fidlar also alleged a common law trespass to chattels claim. Am. Compl. 11-14; ECF No. 31-1. LPS counterclaimed for various forms of tortious interference and sought declaratory and injunc-tive relief. Am. Counterclaim 13-30; ECF No. 19. The dispute between the parties rests on LPS’s method of accessing real estate information that Fidlar helps counties digitize and make available online. Before the Court are LPS’s Motion for Summary Judgment and Request for Oral Argument, ECF No. 77, and LPS’s Alternative Motion for Partial Summary Judgment on Certain of Fidlar’s Claims for Damages and Request for Oral Argument, ECF No. 79. For the following reasons, Fidlar’s Motion for Summary Judgment is GRANTED. Because the Court grants this motion in its entirety, LPS’s motion for partial summary judgment is MOOT.

BACKGROUND 1

Fidlar is a technology company that creates and licenses software to the county offices that maintain land records. Some of this software helps counties digitize their paper records by scanning images of the documents and indexing these images. Some of the software allows counties to make these records available over the internet. If counties wish to make the records available online, they can either host them on their own servers, or contract with Fidlar to host them on its servers. During the time period relevant to this case, the hosting of records using either method was accomplished using a group of software components, collectively called “Laredo,” created by Fidlar.2

Laredo consisted of a database which stored the index and image data gathered from paper land records; a “middle tier”; and a user interface contained in a client.3 The middle tier was an intermediary between database and client, responding to the Ghent’s requests with images and infor-matipn from the database. These requests were generally transmitted to the middle tier from a remote client, via the internet. They came in the form of “SOAP calls.” [847]*847SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) is a protocol for exchanging information. A SOAP call consists of a “header,” which contains information about the call, and a body, which contains the call itself. While SOAP calls can be encrypted at different levels, the calls used by the client to query the middle tier were not.

Fidlar made the client available on its website for people interested in accessing county land records. By downloading the client, remote users could download and view on their own computers land record information that counties had digitized. Regardless of whether Fidlar or the counties hosted the land record information, that information remained the property of the counties who granted users access to the information, often via written agreement and sometimes for a fee. Fidlar was not a party to these agreements. The client did contain an End User License Agreement (“EULA”), written by Fidlar, that was packaged with the client software and was made available to users. In order to use the client, users had to accept the EULA’s terms and conditions. See Fidlar Technologies Laredo End User License Agreement, Mem. Supp. Mot. Summ. J. Ex. 15, ECF No. 78-15.

LPS is a real estate data analytics company that gathers and sells information about real property.4 In pursuit of this mission, the company culls information from land records on a “vast scale.” Resp. Mot. Summ. J. 2, ECF No. 82. LPS currently has agreements to access public land title information with about 2,600 county recorders’ offices nationwide. Around 2010, LPS undertook an expansion effort, forming agreements with more counties. Marroquin Dep. 21-22, ECF No. 78-3. 82 of these were counties that made their land documents available online using Fidlar’s services. LPS entered into arrangements with each of these counties to access their land records. Some counties used written contracts; others had sign-up sheets or other less formal means of arranging for access. Where counties priced access differently based on the number of minutes of time logged searching land records, LPS paid the counties the fee required for the maximum amount of time possible, or “unlimited” time.5

LPS’s preferred method of getting access to land records digitally, in non-Fidlar counties, was via file transfer protocol or some other means by which records could be grabbed en masse. For reasons that the parties dispute, but at the very least, to speed up the process of accessing and analyzing land records, LPS developed its own method of retrieving images through the middle tier in each of the Fidlar counties.6 To do this, LPS downloaded Fidlar’s client, logged in using the identifying information given to it by a particular county, and searched for a land record. LPS then used a “traffic analyzer” to capture the SOAP calls that the Fidlar client sent to the middle tier.7 While the parties [848]*848disagree about whether the process that LPS used to analyze the captured calls might be described as “trial and error,” it remains undisputed that by analyzing the content of the intercepted SOAP calls, LPS was eventually able to figure out what kind of information SOAP calls sent to the middle tier needed to contain so that the middle tier would respond with a particular land record. LPS then created its own client to generate SOAP calls, search the databases of the different counties, and download images of land documents. The parties sometimes refer to this process as “web harvesting.”8

Whether by accident, design, or indifference, the LPS client’s SOAP calls lacked the data necessary for the middle tier to track usage minutes on LPS’s account, or to determine whether LPS had used the functionality of the Laredo client that permitted users to print documents they had downloaded. Thus, although LPS was generating many calls and downloading many land records, Fidlar and the counties contracting with it saw LPS’s account as not logging any minutes, and not having printed any land records. There is no evidence that this volume of requests or their content hindered the operation of Fidlar or county servers.9

Eventually, Fidlar and the counties discovered LPS’s improvised method of accessing the middle tier, and litigation followed. Fidlar filed suit on March 11, 2013. ECF No. 1. LPS moved to dismiss, ECF Nos. 6, 35, filed a counterclaim, ECF No. 8, and moved for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction, ECF No. 9, to stop Fidlar from communicating negative things about LPS to certain counties. On November 8, 2013, the Court issued an order, ECF No. 42, denying the motion to dismiss and the motion for temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction. LPS moved for summary judgment on December 1, 2014. After the close of discovery, there was some dispute between the parties about the admissibility of evidence, particularly with respect to the report and testimony of one of Fidlar’s experts, Dr. Ouri Wolfson, ECF No.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
82 F. Supp. 3d 844, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 27170, 2015 WL 1059007, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/fidlar-technologies-v-lps-real-estate-data-solutions-inc-ilcd-2015.