U.S. judge says LinkedIn cannot block startup from public profile data

By Salvador Rodriguez SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A U.S. federal judge on Monday ruled that Microsoft Corp's LinkedIn unit cannot prevent a startup from accessing public profile data, in a test of how much control a social media site can wield over information its users have deemed to be public. U.S. District Judge Edward Chen in San Francisco granted a preliminary injunction request brought by hiQ Labs, and ordered LinkedIn to remove within 24 hours any technology preventing hiQ from accessing public profiles. "To the extent LinkedIn has already put in place technology to prevent hiQ from accessing these public profiles, it is ordered to remove any such barriers," Chen's order reads. LinkedIn plans to challenge the decision, a company spokeswoman said. “We’re disappointed in the court’s ruling,” the spokeswoman said. “This case is not over. We will continue to fight to protect our members’ ability to control the information they make available on LinkedIn.” The dispute between the two tech companies has been going on since May, when LinkedIn issued a letter to hiQ Labs instructing the startup to stop scraping data from its service. HiQ Labs responded by filing a suit against LinkedIn in June, alleging that the Microsoft-owned social network was in violation of antitrust laws. HiQ Labs uses the LinkedIn data to build algorithms capable of predicting employee behaviours, such as when they might quit. The case is considered to have implications beyond LinkedIn and hiQ Labs and could dictate just how much control companies have over publicly available data that is hosted on their services. Representatives of hiQ Labs did not reply to requests for comment. (Reporting by Salvador Rodriguez and Dan Levine; Editing by Tom Brown)