Unaltered Password Dooms Copyright Claims for Drilling Company
Written July 8, 2020
The Fifth Circuit on June 2, 2020, ruled that Digital Drilling Data Systems can’t pursue copyright claims against a competitor that scraped data from a program built using an open source database, because the program wasn’t effectively secured, and the copied program wasn’t substantially similar. Digital Drilling Data Syst. v. Petrolink Serv. Inc., 5th Cir., No. 19-20116, 7/2/20.
Petrolink obtained a laptop running Digidrill’s program and developed its own program to collect data from Digidrill’s database and transfer it to Petrolink’s own database.
Digidrill sued for copyright infringement, violation of the DMCA, and unjust enrichment; the district court granted summary judgment for Petrolink on both the copyright infringement and the DMCA claims.
The Fifth Circuit affirmed summary judgment but found Petrolink was entitled to fees as the prevailing party on DMCA and copyright claims because the database was accessible via a default password which Digidrill failed to change, meaning Petrolink didn’t circumvent any security measures, as barred by the DMCA.