Summary

  • Ticketmaster sued Tickets.com in July 1999 over direct links to its event pages and alleged copying of event information. It sought an interim order to stop deep linking and spidering; the court refused in August 2000, and the refusal was affirmed in January 2001.
  • In March 2003 the court dismissed Ticketmaster’s claims except a contract theory. It then dismissed that remaining state claim without prejudice for lack of federal jurisdiction. Ticketmaster’s parent reported a final judgment ending the federal action on 25 March 2003.

The irritating feature of a link is that it works even when the destination’s owner dislikes the route. In the late 1990s, Ticketmaster sold access to events from pages inside its site. A rival guide could tell a reader about the show, then send that reader directly to the relevant Ticketmaster page when the rival could not sell the ticket itself. The buyer still reached Ticketmaster’s checkout. The rival had chosen the entrance.

That split between discovery and sale powered the fight with Tickets.com. Ticketmaster and Ticketmaster Online-Citysearch filed suit on 23 July 1999. Their FY2001 Form 10-K says the complaint targeted links to internal pages without consent. It also alleged that Tickets.com systematically accessed Ticketmaster’s computers, copied event pages, extracted URLs and event information, and presented misleading information about the two companies’ relationship. Those are Ticketmaster’s allegations, recorded in its own filing. The lawsuit itself shows the commercial nerve: the person who owns the event ticket does not necessarily own the page on which the customer first decides to buy it.

The direct link was small; the requested control was wide. Ticketmaster wanted to stop a rival from putting a customer at the particular event page rather than at the general home page. It also wanted to stop the rival’s automated collection of event information. The first contest was over referral traffic; the second over the event facts that made such referrals useful. Ticketmaster’s filing grouped both with claims about confusion and misrepresentation. The web’s ordinary address bar had become a contested distribution channel.

The procedural record is unusually clear because Ticketmaster had to describe the case to investors. It moved for a preliminary injunction on 3 March 2000. The requested order covered deep links, spidering, access to its systems, copying of event pages and disputed representations. After a July hearing, the district court denied the motion in August 2000. The Ninth Circuit affirmed that denial in January 2001, according to the same company filing. Ticketmaster did not obtain the immediate barrier it had sought.

Tickets.com counterattacked with antitrust claims. It argued that Ticketmaster’s arrangements with venues, promoters and other parties harmed competition. Ticketmaster’s Form 10-K presents that as Tickets.com’s position, not as an established market finding. The fight had two rival accounts of the same architecture. Ticketmaster described unauthorized access to its pages; Tickets.com described a ticketing market fenced by exclusive arrangements. Either way, the contested link crossed a real business boundary: the guide could organize demand, while Ticketmaster remained the company selling tickets for events under its control.

The case did not end at the injunction. A later USA Interactive FY2002 Form 10-K records a failed mediation in September 2002, followed by motions for summary judgment. On 3 March 2003 the district court dismissed Tickets.com’s federal and state antitrust counterclaims. It also dismissed Ticketmaster’s claims against Tickets.com except for breach of contract. That left an important distinction in plain view. Owning the event inventory had not carried Ticketmaster’s non-contract claims through the case; terms governing access still had a path to be argued.

That path did not produce a federal trial. On 17 March the court dismissed the remaining state-law claims, including Ticketmaster’s contract claim, without prejudice because federal subject-matter jurisdiction was gone. The parent company’s FY2003 filing records final judgment on 25 March 2003 dismissing the federal action in its entirety. It also says Ticketmaster did not cross-appeal the dismissal of its claims. The same filing reports Tickets.com’s antitrust appeal as pending at that point; it supplies no later result for that appeal.

The chain of filings matters more than a victory slogan. A preliminary order was denied. Later, non-contract claims were dismissed. The remaining contract issue left federal court without prejudice. None of those steps is interchangeable. Ticketmaster could sell the ticket, restrict a venue through its commercial agreements, publish conditions for use of its site, and still face a separate fight over whether a rival could send a customer directly to an event page. The web exposed how many kinds of control had been bundled under the innocent phrase “our customers.”

Original records