LinkedIn Scores Partial Win in Long-Running Data Scraping Feud

A workforce analytics firm breached LinkedIn Corp.‘s user agreement by scraping data and using fake accounts to fuel its now-defunct business, a federal court in San Francisco ruled in a lengthy dispute that’s on a path to trial.

The ruling, made public Friday, represents a partial win for LinkedIn in a case that also asks whether hiQ Labs Inc.'s scraping violated a federal anti-hacking law, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

Questions remain for trial about when LinkedIn became aware of the scraping, whether the company should have stepped in sooner, and whether HiQ can raise certain defenses ...