Attribution

New Case On Online Data Collections

August 22, 2011

Case:  CollegeSource, Inc. v. AcademyOne, Inc., 09-56528  (9th Cir., Aug. 8, 2011) What allegedly happened:  A Ninth Circuit panel decided that a plaintiff company that allegedly had its online collection of college catalogs copied by the defendant company could sue in its home state of California.  Plaintiff alleged that it spent $10 million dollars collecting the college catalogs and putting them online in the popular Adobe pdf format.  In this case, defendant company left plaintiff’s watermark type identification on the catalogs which defendant appropriated to its own use.  Comment:  While attribution is honorable, it kind of came back to bite the defendant in this case by suggesting that defendant knew, or should have known, that plaintiff was in California, thereby supporting California jurisdiction for the law suit.