The Daily Caveat featured a story earlier in the week about the lawsuit brought against Archive.org and the lawfirm Harding, Early, Follmer & Frailey by Healtcare Advocates. William Patry, a partner with Thelen Reid & Priest expounded upon the case recently in his copyright-devoted blog. Here's a snippit:

The Way Back Machine and Robots.txt
The Patry Copyright Blog
Tuesday, July 12, 2005

On July 8th, a complaint was filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Healthcare Advocates, Inc. v. Harding, Early, Follmer & Frailey, et al. This is such an extraordinary document that I will break with my usual practice of not commenting on complaints or motions.

Those who decry the DMCA as an (attempted) tool of oppression will find more than ample support in this effort. Other laws are implicated too, including some I venture to guess most IP lawyers have never heard of at least in the IP context, for example, a Greta Garbo like claim for "Intrusion upon Seclusion."

Others, such as the Computer Fraud & Abuse Act and trespass to chattels have become better known recently but are invoked here in a novel way, to say the least. In my opinion (and all this is opinion whether denominated as such or not), the Healthcare Advocates complaint represents a misuse of the legal process.

Strong words...

Click on over to his blog follow along as Patry makes his case. He also has a link to case complaint if you want to give it a look.

Hat tip to the fine BetweenLawyers.

-- MDT