A Christie’s-Owned Tech Company Must Pay Heritage Auctions $1.8 Million for Data Theft, a Court Rules

A judge has ordered Collectrium to pay
Heritage Auctions close to $1.8 million, bringing to a close the
long-running data theft lawsuit filed by the Dallas auctioneers
against the art-tech start-up, which specializes in collection
management, and parent company Christie’s. (In 2015, Christie’s bought
Collectrium for somewhere between $16 million and $25
million. Due in no small part to the lawsuit, it has
been something of an awkward
marriage.)

Heritage sued its larger
auction house rival in 2016, alleging that Collectrium employees
signed up for multiple accounts and used data-scraping software
“spiders” to steal some three million listings over a period of two
years.

The settlement figure may seem large, but it’s a small
fraction—0.047 percent, to be precise—of the over $49 million in
damages that Heritage initially sought. The suit had demanded
$150,000 for each infringement and up $25,000 for each violation of
the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Heritage’s claims against Collectrium of trespass, unfair
competition, and civil conspiracy were dismissed with prejudice.
And although Heritage sued both Collectrium and Christie’s, only
the subsidiary company was found to have any liability. Both sides,
therefore, are claiming victory.

“We are very pleased with the decision,” said Heritage CEO Steve
Ivy in an email to artnet News. “Fortunately, our great IT
department was able to stop this illicit activity before any
significant damage was done.”

“All the claims against Christie’s were
dismissed as were the vast majority of the claims
against Collectrium,” a Collectrium spokesperson told
artnet News. “Collectrium is otherwise
complying with the award.”

The ruling, from arbitrator judge James Ware, first came down in
February, but wasn’t confirmed until June. The court unsealed
several documents related to the arbitration decision earlier this
month.

Ware found that Collectrium knowingly violated Heritage’s user
agreement and copyright registrations in creating multiple user
accounts to scrape the company’s auction listings, a practice it
maintained over a period of two years.

“Collectrium’s purpose in copying Heritage materials was for
commercial gain,” Ware wrote. “Indeed, the evidence shows that
Collectrium was able to provide to its sister corporation,
Christie’s, some initial scraped data in exchange for money.”

Based on Collectrium logging into the Heritage website a total
of 1,755 times, Ware awarded Heritage $1,000 for each individual
violation, or over $1,755,000 in total. An additional $5,000 was
awarded as the minimum for violations of the Computer Fraud and
Abuse Act, plus $1 for breach of contract. The judge’s final ruling
also awards Heritage attorney’s fees and costs of $553,269.17.

“The arbitrator’s actions—both in finding in favor of Heritage
Auctions on the crucial issues and awarding Heritage Auctions most
of its attorney’s fees for bringing the case,” said Ivy, “will
likely send a strong signal to others with similar bad
intentions.”

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Auctions $1.8 Million for Data Theft, a Court Rules appeared
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