[1][2] In 2000, eBay, an online auction company, successfully used the 'trespass to chattels' theory to obtain a preliminary injunction preventing Bidder's Edge, an auction data aggregator, from using a 'crawler' to gather data from eBay's website.

[1][2][3] The opinion was a leading case applying 'trespass to chattels' to online activities, although its analysis has been criticized in more recent jurisprudence.

[1]: 1061 eBay's "User Agreement" (terms of use) and "robot exclusion headers" (robots.txt) disallowed crawling of auction listings without prior permission.

[1]: 1060 [4][5] In early 1998, eBay allowed BE to include Beanie Babies and Furby auction listings in BE's database.

[1] Subsequently, in early 1999, BE added auction listings from many other sites in its database, including eBay's.

[1]: 1062  Doing so would increase the accuracy/currency of the data BE presented to its users and impose a lighter load on eBay's network.

[1]: 1062 On November 2, 1999, BE issued a press release indicating that it had resumed including eBay auction listings on its site.

[3][1]: 1061 eBay sued Bidder's Edge on December 10, 1999, in the Northern District of California federal court.

[1]: 1065  eBay moved for a preliminary injunction on the following causes of action: BE filed antitrust counterclaims on February 7, 2000.

[1]: 1072 Based on its findings, the court issued a preliminary injunction against BE from "using any automated query program, robot, or similar device to access eBay's computer systems or networks for the purpose of copying any part of eBay's auction database.

"[1]: 1073 One day after it filed federal antitrust charges against eBay, Bidder's Edge announced it would be acquired by OpenSite, an auction software company.

The Hamidi court considered the eBay court analysis, which stated that if BE's activity were allowed to continue unchecked, it would encourage other auction aggregators to engage in similar searching which would cause eBay irreparable harm.

For example, in White Buffalo Ventures LLC v. University of Texas at Austin, the Fifth Circuit said "Since the spider does not cause physical injury to the chattel, there must be some evidence that the use or utility of the computer (or computer network) being 'spiderized' is adversely affected by the use of the spider.