From Programmable Web: US Court of Appeals Irreparably Damages API Economy
Last fall, after a lower court ruled that HiQ was within its rights to circumvent LinkedIn’s API program by “scraping” LinkedIn’s Web pages, a US Court of Appeals upheld the ruling and paved the way for irreparable harm to the API economy. What this means for the future of the API economy remains to be seen. But, in upholding the lower court’s decision, the US Court of Appeals not only made it exceedingly difficult for companies to justify (through monetization) the provision of public APIs, it may have stifled organizational interest in making important data available to the public.
LinkedIn (a subsidiary of Microsoft) was denied its subsequent petition for the Circuit Court to rehear the case and has since asked the Supreme Court to intervene.
It will be interesting to follow the Supreme Court case and the precedent this ruling will set.