X Corp. has partially revived its legal battle against Israeli data scraping firm Bright Data Ltd., with a California federal judge allowing some of the social media company’s amended claims to proceed. The lawsuit alleges Bright Data engaged in unauthorized and “sophisticated efforts” to access X’s platform, causing harm to its operations.
Unauthorized Access Claims Move Forward
U.S. District Judge William H. Alsup ruled Tuesday that X’s updated complaint sufficiently alleges that Bright Data improperly accessed X’s servers and engaged in fraudulent business practices. These revised claims can now proceed, though amendments related specifically to scraping and selling data remain blocked.
“This proposed complaint plausibly alleges that Bright Data undertook sophisticated efforts to access X with knowledge that such access was beyond the scope of any authorization,” Judge Alsup wrote.
X’s earlier lawsuit, dismissed in May, claimed Bright Data violated terms by scraping data such as user bios, locations, posts, and brand affiliations. Bright Data allegedly sold this information to customers, including Fortune 500 companies. While Judge Alsup found scraping-related claims were preempted by the Copyright Act, he left the door open for X to revise claims tied to unauthorized access.
Updated Claims Highlight Server Strain
In its amended complaint, X detailed how Bright Data’s scraping activities disproportionately strained server capacity, causing intermittent glitches and degraded user experiences. X further alleged it incurred costs to replace or upgrade servers to address these disruptions.
