Federal court has no jurisdiction over PeopleBrowsr’s lawsuit against Twitter for shutoff of the “Firehose” – PeopleBrowsr, Inc. v. Twitter, Inc., 2013 WL 843032 (N.D. Cal. Mar. 6, 2013)
Big Data equal big assets, and in 2012, Twitter made significant moves toward putting a premium on its assets by restricting access to its data to third-party services (count Instagram and Tumblr among those affected). Social analytics provider PeopleBrowsr was one of the services affected by the changes in Twitter’s data access policies. In 2012, Twitter shut off PeopleBrowsr’s access to the “Firehose,” the nickname for the full stream of every tweet posted on Twitter. PeopleBrowsr mines data from the Firehose to derive insights about consumer reactions and identify social influencers for its clients. PeopleBrowsr fought back against the impending Firehose shutoff by suing Twitter in California state court and successfully obtaining a temporary restraining order to stop the shutoff.
The next chapter in the lawsuit unfolded in federal court. Twitter removed the lawsuit to federal court and then filed a motion to dismiss the action. But the lawsuit’s stay in federal court will be brief because federal district judge Edward Chen recently issued a decision sending the lawsuit back to state court. Twitter invoked federal jurisdiction on the ground that PeopleBrowsr’s claim for violation of California’s Unfair Competition Law (UCL) is based in part on the Sherman Act, over which federal courts have exclusive jurisdiction. Not so fast, said Judge Chen. At best, the Sherman Act might give Twitter a defense to the UCL claim. Unlike an affirmative claim for relief, a defense under federal law is not enough to support federal jurisdiction. The alleged violations of the UCL were based entirely on California law. Since federal courts have no jurisdiction over the lawsuit, the fight over the Firehose will continue in California courts. The court awarded attorneys’ fees to Peoplebrowsr for opposing the removal of the case to federal court.
