Almost as quickly as they flared up, the legal fires were snuffed in a dispute between business information guide Hoover's and yellow pages directory InfoSpace.
Hoover's today said it withdrew its temporary injunction against InfoSpace and its president Naveen Jain over alleged copyright violations. A U.S. District Court in Texas granted the order last week preventing InfoSpace from operating its "executive" search engine on its Web site, which Hoover's said was misappropriating its copyrighted information.
The InfoSpace feature allowed users to search for the address and phone number of a business. If users clicked on the company name, it brought up background information compiled by Hoover's, such as descriptions of the firm's operations and its executives.
The lawsuit had alleged that InfoSpace and company president Naveen Jain misappropriated Hoover's material and made it available at the search directory's Web site. Hoover's said the material was supposed to carry its copyright.
Jain said the executive search feature will resume on the site within a week and that the lawsuit had stemmed from a misunderstanding. "They gave us the data, and I thought we were doing everything they wanted us to. But there was a small thing that we were not," Jain said, declining to elaborate.
The Hoover's suit had alleged copyright infringement, fraud, unfair competition, trade secret misappropriations, and injury to business reputation.