Flightmonkey might be a better name. Apps like Hopper appear to be monitoring flight prices just fine, not sure if they include SW, though.
Doing flight searches via other travel platforms/apis may also be legal.
Southwest Airlines is intimidating our startup
61–70 of 76 posts
Re: Southwest Airlines is intimidating our startup
#62"And we believe that whether you are accessing that data by typing in a URL in a web browser, through a CURL request, an RSS feed, a cached copy, or having someone read it to you aloud, does not change your right to access public data."
I absolutely do have the right to access the data. However, it's not clear why you should have the right to access the data and then monetize redistributing it to me.
Re: Southwest Airlines is intimidating our startup
#63Calling it Southwest monkey is clearly a mistake. You have little argument there, and you should change that because to a 3rd party it could look like a service offered by Southwest itself. The part about scraping, etc, is more complicated and you may want to fight that. See: http://blog.icreon.us/advise/web-scraping-legality and https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/08/court-rejects-li... as two quick examples I…
I've never understood why people do that. It's not as though you'd have much more work on your hands with a "safe name" from a promotions standpoint.
Because they will most likely sue them for copyright infringement.
By having Southwest(SW) in the websites name, they are adding fuel to the fire
Re: Southwest Airlines is intimidating our startup
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nice work, it even has a deploy to Heroku button! Honestly, I think it's pretty lame trying to profit from arbitrage on SW prices like that. $3 per alert? Really? Great job making an OSS implementation.
> pretty lame trying to profit from arbitrage Lame? Possibly. Profitable? Probably.
> pretty lame trying to profit from arbitrage
It's actually quite stupid. If they did not ask Southwest for permission, they are asking to be sued, especially when you charge people money.
Re: Southwest Airlines is intimidating our startup
#65Google flights doesnt show SW pricing. That itself should have been a red flag for the creators.
Seriously! It is almost as if they thought there was no reason why it didn't appear on Google....
Remember ignorance is bliss
Re: Southwest Airlines is intimidating our startup
#66This is a shame. CFAA and the TOS are clearly being used to restrict competing.
Re: Southwest Airlines is intimidating our startup
#67Calling it Southwest monkey is clearly a mistake. You have little argument there, and you should change that because to a 3rd party it could look like a service offered by Southwest itself. The part about scraping, etc, is more complicated and you may want to fight that. See: http://blog.icreon.us/advise/web-scraping-legality and https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/08/court-rejects-li... as two quick examples I…
Really? It's bad enough when common words get trademarked, but they didn't even call themselves "Southwest Monkey". They called it "SWMonkey".
Without extra context (knowing what the website is for by reading the description), I'd have no clue that "swmonkey" has anything to do with airlines.
Anyhow, that's a separate issue. Southwest was clearly less concerned about trademark infringement than they were with the business model. The contents of the email clearly indicate that they want to disallow scraping with their ToS, and want to enforce that.
Re: Southwest Airlines is intimidating our startup
#68Calling it Southwest monkey is clearly a mistake. You have little argument there, and you should change that because to a 3rd party it could look like a service offered by Southwest itself. The part about scraping, etc, is more complicated and you may want to fight that. See: http://blog.icreon.us/advise/web-scraping-legality and https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/08/court-rejects-li... as two quick examples I…
Really? It's bad enough when common words get trademarked, but they didn't even call themselves "Southwest Monkey". They called it "SWMonkey". Without extra context (knowing what the website is for by reading the description), I'd have no clue that "swmonkey" has anything to do with airlines. Anyhow, that's a separate issue. Southwest was clearly less concerned about trademark infringement than they were with the bus…
> but they didn't even call themselves "Southwest Monkey".
Yes they did, and I quote their FAQ:
"How long does Southwest Monkey track flights?"
> They called it "SWMonkey".
I think they changed their name after the letters (and presumably forgot to change it there).
Re: Southwest Airlines is intimidating our startup
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Really? It's bad enough when common words get trademarked, but they didn't even call themselves "Southwest Monkey". They called it "SWMonkey". Without extra context (knowing what the website is for by reading the description), I'd have no clue that "swmonkey" has anything to do with airlines. Anyhow, that's a separate issue. Southwest was clearly less concerned about trademark infringement than they were with the bus…
> but they didn't even call themselves "Southwest Monkey". Yes they did, and I quote their FAQ: "How long does Southwest Monkey track flights?" > They called it "SWMonkey". I think they changed their name after the letters (and presumably forgot to change it there).
Oopsie then, "Southwest Monkey" does look like a trademark issue on top of the scraping issue. Certainly doesn't help.
That said, the guy with the skiplagged website (same idea: use publicly available flight pricing to produce tickets that the airlines see as undesirable) prevailed against the pressure from the airlines, so the situation doesn't look too bleak.
Re: Southwest Airlines is intimidating our startup
#70Good for you. I completely agree with your sentiment re: scraping. It's ok if Google or another big company does it but god help you if you do as an indie dev. Thank you for sharing this. I commend you.
I've scraped millions of records from all kinds of companies big and small, politely of course, and I will definitely continue to do so at my discretion for ideas. In your case I would've scraped southwest without hesitation.
I'd make sure to distance yourself from the trademark as much as possible. Maybe even remove "sw" from the domain name but otherwise I don't see how they have a case.
TOS trying to enforce anti-scraping measures is a joke and makes a mockery of the judicial system.