Nominative Fair Use and Internet Aggregators: Copyright and Trademark Challenges Posed by Bots, Web Crawlers and Screen-Scraping Technologies
Sean O’Reilly · bepress Legal Repository · 2007
Technology has undoubtedly changed the face of commerce, allowing for new business models and unique interactions between vendor and consumers. Hyper-growth of the Internet has confronted the law with new challenges and, in many cases, forced a reexamination of traditional legal principles. One of the areas most challenged by the growth of technology and the Internet is intellectual property—more specifically copyright and trademark infringement. While these areas have received great scrutiny as they apply to file-sharing and music “pirating,” a less publicized issue concerns the actions of “internet aggregators” or meta-search services. Kayak.com, a popular travel aggregator, for example, is a megasearch engine that “scans[s] the Web for bargains on airfares, hotels, car rentals and other travel services.” Secure Commerce Services, another popular Internet aggregator, amasses financial account information, providing consumers with a top-down view of their personal financial information captured from multiple financial institutions’ websites. What was once a small niche Internet service