Google-owned Waze App Targeted in Copyright Lawsuit

App-maker PhantomAlert has sued Google-owned Waze in a copyright infringement lawsuit centering on a database that provides traffic information.


PhantomAlert, which makes an app of the same name, provides users with information about traffic issues, such as locations of speed cameras. The app-maker monitors and informs users using global position system technology. Since the creation of the app seven years ago, PhantomAlert has created a database called Points of Interest that details roads and locations that may cause potential issues for drivers. Last month, the app maker applied to copyright the information compiled in the database.


Waze, which was established in 2007 and acquired by Google for $1 billion in 2013, has its own method of tracking traffic incidents and communicating them to users via their mobile phones.


But in its complaint, filed on September 1 at the US District Court for the Northern District of California, PhantomAlert claimed that Waze is infringing the copyright it owns for its database.


According to the lawsuit, Waze chief executive Noam Bardin contacted PhantomAlert in 2010 about sharing information but PhantomAlert declined to cooperate. The lawsuit added that, from 2012, Waze has copied the data compiled by PhantomAlert.


The court document said: “Without any consent from PhantomAlert, defendants repeatedly copied PhantomAlert’s Points of Interest database, incorporated the data into the Waze application, and displayed the data to users of the Waze application”. “Waze copied the PhantomAlert Points of Interest database in its entirety in or around late 2012 without any authorisation or consent,” the court document added.


PhantomAlert is requesting a permanent injunction against Waze and damages.


Joseph Scott Seyoum, chief executive of PhantomAlert, said: “The financial and reputational damages we have incurred from having our unique and carefully built database stolen are staggering. “While we cannot undo the past, we can ensure that those who took our intellectual property no longer profit from it at our expense,” he added.