Judge Alsup noted that the updated allegations marked a significant improvement over prior claims.
“X now plausibly alleges that scrapers traverse the X service in patterns markedly different from humans or authorized machines, resulting in abnormal use of server capacity,” the judge wrote. This claim of “trespass to chattels” is now viable, as X demonstrated the harm caused by Bright Data’s unauthorized access.
X Revives Lawsuit Against Israeli Data Scraping Firm : Scraping-Related Claims Still Barred
However, Judge Alsup rejected amendments tied to scraping-related claims, such as misappropriation and unjust enrichment. These were previously dismissed under the Copyright Act, which preempts state-law claims attempting to control how publicly available content is used.
“X Corp. cannot use state-law claims to exercise control over content it licenses publicly, even when it charges fees for access,” the May ruling stated. The court emphasized that X’s case centers on protecting its own monetization efforts, not user privacy.
