Legal brinksmanship apparently pays off as a negotiating tactic. Five days after Hoover's Inc. charged in a US federal court filing that InfoSpace was violating its copyright, the two companies managed to amicably settle their dispute.
"InfoSpace and Hoover's were quickly able to resolve their dispute, and have agreed on economic terms regarding the past use of the Hoover's copyrighted information and to provisions limiting the future use of the information," the companies declared in a joint statement released Monday morning.
Last Wednesday, Texas-based Hoover's, the business reference publisher, filed suit in US District Court in Austin, Texas, claiming that InfoSpace had illegally offered Hoover's 10,000-entry database of company information on the InfoSpace Web site. The Seattle-area company is one of several companies offering searchable directory services, including Yellow Pages and personal telephone, email, and Web site information.
