A$60.6 million judgment has been issued in favor of Craigslist against rental listing site RadPad for violating anti-spam laws and craigslist’s terms of service in an alleged data-scraping scheme.
The judgement came after RadPad, which had raised $13 million in funding in 2015, ran into financial trouble last year.
It had “assigned its assets” to an insolvency group in November 2016, according to the judgment. In January, the company reportedly sold to LandlordStation, a tenant-screening company.
Former RadPad CEO Jonathan Eppers stepped aside as CEO, but was to be kept on as an adviser.
Onradpad.com is still active.
The court’s final judgment, permanent injunction
A California court found that RadPad had continued to “access, copy and use Craigslist’s website, services, and content” without authorization after Craigslist had demanded that RadPad cease such practices.
According to the court, RadPad scraped Craigslist for listings and the contact information of Craigslist users. It then allegedly published the scraped listings on its website and sent thousands of emails with “false and misleading” information that promoted RadPad products and services to the craigslist users.
The court found that RadPad’s actions violated the CAN-SPAM Act, California anti-spam and anti-fraud laws and craigslist’s terms of use, and constituted copyright infringement.
The $60.56 million judgment included $40 million for violations of the CAN-SPAM Act based on 400,000 emails and $15.9 million for copyright infringement.
It ordered RadPad officers and employees to forever cease to reproduce or display any Craigslist content and to cease sending electronic messages to craigslist users bearing “false, fraudulent, anonymous, inactive, deceptive, or invalid return information,” among other prohibitions.
