NYT on suit against Internet Archive

[Liblicense-L Listowner <liblicen@pantheon.yale.edu>]

Of possible interest.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/13/technology/13suit.html?pagewanted=all

Keeper of Expired Web Pages Is Sued Because Archive Was Used in Another
Suit

By TOM ZELLER

Published: July 13, 2005

The Internet Archive was created in 1996 as the institutional memory of
the online world, storing snapshots of ever-changing Web sites and
collecting other multimedia artifacts. Now the nonprofit archive is on the
defensive in a legal case that represents a strange turn in the debate
over copyrights in the digital age.

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.

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