Snooth & CellarTracker – Legal & Ethical Ain’t Always The Same

Point. Counterpoint.

Vintank’s Paul Mabray has written two blog posts ( #1 here and #2 here) on what he sees as Snooth’s improper use of CellarTracker tags by Snooth.

Snooth has responded twice: in a Cyril Penn blog post at Wine Business Insider Blog, and in Snooth Founder Phillip James’ blog.

In essence, Mabray has accused Snooth of copyright infringement — taking tags from CellarTracker’s words from its site and posting them with its own reviews. Snooth denies this. CellarTracker’s CEO says he may consult his lawyers.

While there is clearly a controversy, Snooth may not be legally liable even IF a court were to find that the words on their site are the same as those on CellarTracker’s. I am not convicting Snooth here. The evidence that Snooth and Mabray have presented stand on their own. But the point is that even if — for the sake of argument — even if Snooth did take the words off the CellarTracker site, it’s a long shot that a court would find them guilty.

This is because facts cannot be copyrighted.

This issue has gone all the way to the US Supreme Court who ruled in Feist v. Rural that one phone company could *legally* harvest all the listings from another phone company’s directory, then use that data to create their own directory.

Sure, that case may seem wrong. After all, considerable effort, time and expense went into compiling the original directory. It does seem unfair and unjust for another company to freeload on the first.

But American courts — all the way up to the Supremes — are not about fairness or justice as the average person sees them. Courts are about “the law.”

That is why any number of other reporters — both in the wine industry and out — have *legally* taken the facts in my own original reporting, re-arrange them and report them as their own.

It doesn’t matter to the law that I may spend 20 or 30 hours digging out the facts for a single article … facts are not protected and can be used by anyone. Legally, that is NOT theft. You may think that’s unfair, unjust and unethical  (I certainly do), but it’s legal.

Occasionally, I have called out those (like the Napa Register) who have freeloaded. They’ve violated no law. But I don’t have to like that. But trying to sue them for their acts is a fool’s errand.

Like so many things, it ain’t right, but it’s the law.

So where does this leave the Snooth/CellarTracker controversy? I don’t know. A court would need to decide the legal status of the issue.

On the other hand, Snooth and CellarTracker could continue to slug it out publicly, make their case in the court of public opinion. That would certainly be less expensive and, at the very least, generate a greater public awareness for both companies.