LinkedIn loses appeal in suit against data scraping startup

A federal appeals court has affirmed the right of a startup company to scrape people's profiles on networking service LinkedIn for data.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Michigan upheld a previous ruling Monday siding with hiQ Labs, a San Francisco company that analyzes workforce data scraped from public profiles.

LinkedIn invoked a federal anti-hacking law in telling hiQ to stop. LinkedIn also installed technical blocks to prevent hiQ from accessing otherwise publicly available information on LinkedIn users. A 2017 ruling ordered LinkedIn to stop blocking the startup. LinkedIn appealed.

LinkedIn, which is owned by Microsoft Corp., says it is disappointed in the decision and evaluating options for an appeal. HiQ did not immediately respond for a message for comment Monday.