Lawsuit is seen as a watershed in Brazilian Justice considering volume of evidences and final amount of the award
São Paulo, August 31, 2011 – With reference to the matter in our press release in October 2009*, Curriculum hereby informs the public that in July 29 the decision on the Curriculum vs. Catho lawsuit was released, whereby Catho is ordered to pay R$ 21,828,250.00 (equivalent to approximately US$ 14 million), plus monetary restatement since May 2002, thus reaching an amount of exceeding R$ 63 million (equivalent to US$ 42 million) for the damages inflicted on Curriculum due to the practice of unfair trade competition and abuse of rights, plus court costs, technical assistants' fees and lawyers' fees. Catho belongs to the American fund of private equity Tiger Global Management.
In 2002, after it was found that Catho had made many undue accesses to Curriculum's database for copying its database without authorization, Curriculum filed an action for damages against the Catho Group for its practice of unfair trade competition, and after nine years of processing, the lawsuit had a decision recently issued by Judge Dr. Luiz Mario Galbetti.
The Judge was very clear and assertive in the sentence, leaving no doubts regarding the unlawfulness of the conduct repeatedly conducted by Catho.
Provided below is an abridgment of the Court decision:
“(...)The expert evidence provided leaves it clear that the plaintiff CURRICULUM TECNOLOGIA LTDA. and the defendant CATHO ONLINE S/C LTDA. are companies that compete in the same market of assistance for the hiring of professionals, and the messages and reports of CATHO ONLINE have referred to the former (CURRICULUM) as a company that would be its competitor. (...)”
““(...)The very names given to some of these programs clearly indicate the awareness about the unlawfulness of the acts they were carrying out, since the programs developed to abnormally access the competitors' sites to capture data that would not be available in the same way had the access been made as a user-client, had the following names: “rouba.phtml”, “rouba.php”, “rouba2.php” (where "rouba" in Portuguese means "steals", and “pesquisar.php”, where "pesquisar" means "to search"), plus other names. If that were not enough, defendant CATHO's own employees in their electronic messages and in other files called themselves “hacker” or “cracker”, stating that their function was to "steal résumés" (please refer, at the end, to pages 737 and 769 of these files and 167 of the provisional remedy). For that purpose, please also refer to the dialogue between co-defendant ADRIANO MEIRINHO and someone called DANIEL SIARKOWSKI VENTURA, responsible for the official site of fashion model contest “RIACHUELO MEGA MODEL”, iin which the former brags about working as a hacker/cracker, informing that he was not afraid of being arrested because he would leave no evidences, by simulating the actions of a regular site visitor and specifically mentioning the CURRICULUM site, where they perceived his work, but he would pretend not to understand the questioning if contacted (at the end, please refer to pages 765/766). (...)”
“(...)In e-mails recorded in CATHO's own computers, on February 8 and February 23, 2002, employees RICARDO YALE and ADRIANO JOSÉ MEIRINHO, the co-defendant, exchanged messages dealing with programs that both would have developed to capture competitors' data through the Internet, and affirmed that at that time the database had over 1.2 million e-mails. The same messages also showed that CATHO ONLINE general manager ADRIANO ARRUDA was demanding the use of the captured e-mails in CATHO ONLINE's product PS3, which refers to the sale of databases to client firms, until then using the e-mails captured for sending direct mail (at the end please refer to pages 764/767). And, on April 15, 2002, MEIRINHO informs to ADRIANO ARRUDA that 175,362 résumés had been captured from GELRE and CURRICULUM, and that he was sending to those electronic addresses the Permission Marketing messages, and he tried to discuss about the bonus proportional to the number of captured résumés. The electronic documents found in CATHO's computers also describe in detail the procedures performed by its employees to "capture" competitors' résumé data, and it is clear that the actions performed, both manually and through software, did not respect the functional limits established in the websites of said competitors. (...)”
“(...)On April 5, 2001, CATHO employees LEONARDO DIAS, ADRIANO ARRUDA, FELIPE BUENO and ADRIANO MEIRINHO, exchanged several e-mails with the title “BE CAREFUL, HACKERS!!”, and agreed among themselves upon a "ready discourse" should anyone call them complaining that CATHO ONLINE would be "ransacking the sites, and so on": "we must say we are only consulting résumés for the Case Consultores firm because consulting firms need the résumés to hire new employees. If they prefer, CATHO will avoid hiring the professionals whose résumés are in their site". With that, they intended to simulate a recruiting operation that would benefit the professionals registered in the competitors' sites, although that was not the case, since the data would be used only for commercial actions by CATHO ONLINE. (...)”
“(...)Of course, the evidenced use of permission marketing, and the increase in CATHO's database by the use of the résumés captured from CURRICULUM can result in increased market visibility, with a direct effect on the profit obtained by CATHO in many dealings with its clients. (...)”
Accordingly, the court decision ends by finding Catho guilty, as the sentence states at its end:
“(...)In view of the exposed matters and considering the entire contents of the records, I HEREBY SUSTAIN THE CLAIM, AND SENTENCE the defendant to pay to the plaintiff, for the damage arising from the practice of unfair trade competition and irregular capturing of the plaintiff's database, the amount of R$ 21,828,250.00, with due monetary restatement since the lawsuit assignment (May 2002), (...)”
The facts
Back in 2002, Curriculum found that its system had been irregularly and abnormally accessed by another company that was a Curriculum system user. Through the IP number, it was detected that said company was accessing the system through Catho's internal network. In view of that, and under the guidance of Curriculum's lawyer Ms. Juliana Guaritá Q. Rosenthal, a preliminary report was made that disclosed the practice of unlawful acts that had a capacity to inflict enormous losses to Curriculum and enormous benefits to Catho, its biggest competitor. With basis on said report, Curriculum filed a request for a provisional remedy, and obtained a preliminary injunction for search and seizure of Catho's computers, and those actions were performed.
After a seven-month long analysis of the apprehended material, court experts presented a report showing in clear and rich detail all the procedures adopted by Catho for unlawfully accessing and copying the Curriculum database. The report also clearly showed that those procedures were a common practice by Catho, and that they were planned ahead by Catho employees with incentive by their supervisors and directors and that the target was not restricted to Curriculum, but several other companies had been victimized by those actions, among which Gelre and Manager.
The conversations captured and recorded by the experts clearly demonstrated that all the accused were aware of the unlawfulness and seriousness of their acts.
Information on that matter is in public domain and was widely publicized at the end of 2002, and was the object of a cover feature of the weekly newsmagazine IstoÉ Dinheiro dated December 4, 2002: http://www.istoedinheiro.com.br/noticias/14002_POR%20DENTRO%20DO%20ESQUEMA%20CATHO?concatena=www.istoedinheiro.com.br/noticias/14002_POR+DENTRO+DO+ESQUEMA+CATHO
According to the prosecuting lawyer, Ms. Juliana Guaritá Q. Rosenthal, from the Rosenthal & Guaritá Advogados law firm, “that decision stresses the importance and value of data for a company in internet business, and shows that Brazil is prepared to judge responsibly and with basis on the current legislation all cases involving unlawful practices in the electronic media, and that will end up inhibiting abusive conducts like these.”
For Marcelo Abrileri, Curriculum's CEO, justice has been done. His statement on the case is as follows:
“We are indeed very satisfied with the sentence pronounced by Judge Galbetti. We understand that the long time it took is justified by the complexity of the matter and the large volume of expert evidence. We also understood that the judge was very prudent when allowing full exercise of the right to defense by Catho during the entire proceeding. All that grants even more credit and value to the final outcome. Those were nine long years waiting for this result, but it was worth it. The experts' report showed that the unlawful behavior was not the isolated conduct of the employee Mr. Meirinho, but that his superiors, including Mr. Adriano Arruda and Catho's CEO Mr. Thomas Case, had full knowledge and stimulated such acts with financial rewards and payment of bonuses. After the fact, Catho always regarded that action as a trite affair, attempting to diminish its importance.
I will never forget what I felt when I became aware of the facts through an export's report, when I saw that Adriano Meirinho had created a computer program called "rouba.phtml" ("rouba" means "steals"), with its first line reading "Script for stealing from Curriculum.com.br". In addition to the conversations that that employee had with somebody else, at the time he was attacking Curriculum he would say things like "I have been working as a hacker for exactly 24 hours"; "I've made a good program for stealing information and I am stealing"; "I steal from the big guys and steal good things"; "The guys will call me up in my cell phone and I will pretend I don't understand them"; among several others. Those facts disturbed a lot. However, that report showed clearly that Adriano Meirinho's attitudes were fully supported and stimulated by Adriano Arruda and Thomas Case himself, who, respectively, were the technology director and CEO/owner of Catho. That report also showed the workings of Catho's backstage, and some of the means it used for growing. And I cannot deny that I found it very strange that those people currently hold directors' positions in the company, and Meirinho is the Marketing Director and Arruda the principal executive, and Case sold Catho for a high amount of money. Something that also surprised me was learning that, in July 2006, the US private equity fund Tiger Global Management, which at the time managed funds of almost 2 billion dollars, had acquired a company that showed that type of conduct, even after all that information had been widely publicized in the press and was known by the public. Then, I cannot deny that it is really comforting to receive now the court sentence, after watching all those developments throughout all these years and watch successive attempts by Catho to minimize those facts.
Finally, I want to say that it is very important for everyone to realize that the amount arbitrated by the judge reflects the importance of the unlawfully collected information. These data, amassed by Curriculum with years of hard work, were unlawfully copied by our competitor in merely one week and were used for Catho's own profit in several commercial actions, as clearly shown in the experts' report. Those actions brought financial return and market visibility to Catho."
Shown below is part of the conversation that Catho's Adriano Meirinho held with Daniel Siarkowski in 2002:
Feb. 22 and 23, 2002:
Adriano Meirinho (23:27:41): hehehe you fool... :)
Daniel Siarkowski (23:28:31): look... hehehe... gosh, I thought you stayed in the programmers' room... :)
Adriano Meirinho (23:31:41): I'm not a programmer :) hehehe
Daniel Siarkowski (23:31:58): hehehe you are a mixture of everything. :)
Adriano Meirinho (23:33:16): Yes, of everything, really. :) Now I have been working as a hacker/cracker for exactly 24 hours.
Daniel Siarkowski (23:34:27): hehehe gosh, why?
Adriano Meirinho (23:35:12): because yes, heck... :) Hacker: I found flaws in the system, script... cracker: I made a program to steal information, and I am stealing :) ho ho ho ho :)
Daniel Siarkowski (23:36:16): Gosh, you'll be arrested, I'll never see you again, I'll even forget where your desk was... you will be extradited... hehehe
Adriano Meirinho (23:37:14): hehe arrested? never! :) I don't leave evidences... I use the browser to act :) it's as if I were someone visiting the site :) of course the site's pageview will grow a lot today, but that's OK :) if they see that it's my IP, I already have an excuse to give :) hehehe
Daniel Siarkowski (23:38:20): gosh... hehehehe is it a small site you're tampering with?
Adriano Meirinho (00:07:19): Nope... a HUGE site,,,, damn big :)
Daniel Siarkowski (00:07:38): uol.. heheh
Daniel Siarkowski (00:07:44): have enough gaps?
Adriano Meirinho (00:08:03): No :)
Adriano Meirinho (00:08:15): Every site has flaws... any site has flaws :)
Daniel Siarkowski (00:09:17): yes... but is it rather obvious?
Adriano Meirinho (00:10:00): No... :) Nothing obvious... Not only that, it is VEEEEEEEEEERY safe, damn hard to deceive by chance... The hardest of them all :)
Daniel Siarkowski (00:10:34): heehehe don't know.... someone deceived the VIG here a few times... hehehe
Adriano Meirinho (00:11:33): deceived what?
Daniel Siarkowski (00:12:12): one part of the database, I think... placed a little notice... heheh
Adriano Meirinho (00:12:52): ah, defacement... nice to do but no use at all... hehe
Daniel Siarkowski (00:13:59): hehehe it's true... there's not much to steal here... eeheh
Adriano Meirinho (00:15:11): I steal from the big boys and good things!
Daniel Siarkowski (00:15:24): but is it for Catho?
Adriano Meirinho (00:17:03): hehe...what d'you think^?
Daniel Siarkowski (00:18:06): I think it isn't.. heheheh
Adriano Meirinho (00:18:27): hehehe :)
Daniel Siarkowski (00:21:59): Or is it? :)
Adriano Meirinho (00:24:26): I can't say ;) well, I shouldn't have said anything ):
Daniel Siarkowski (00:25:20): hahahaha of course not... don't worry... do you think I'll go out of here and talk about it... An ICQ talk dies at the ICQ... :)
Adriano Meirinho (00:25:46): no it doesn't die at all... it is filed in history :)
Daniel Siarkowski (00:26:31): hell yes, but there is a password, SSL, 256 bits, Verisign... hehehe
Adriano Meirinho (00:27:17): what?
Daniel Siarkowski (00:27:21): I'm gonna eat something... hehehe
Daniel Siarkowski (00:27:36): the ICQ... hehe I'm just kidding... I'll pay later... take it easy... :) t-
Adriano Meirinho (00:27:48): where'll you eat?
Daniel Siarkowski (00:28:06): The Mac, I think... I'll have a meeting afterwards
March 1st, 2002:
Daniel Siarkowski (04:52:23): of course, man! I'll be on the Net in the evening and I'll sure let you know! :) agreed?
Adriano Meirinho (04:52:29): OK then.
Daniel Siarkowski (04:53:22): Allright, man! Take it easy!!! I'll let you know! Stay calm! hehe
Adriano Meirinho (04:53:29): Okay.
Daniel Siarkowski (04:53:49): :))
Adriano Meirinho (04:53:55): hehe
Continued...March 1st, 2002:
Daniel Siarkowski (21:32:10): Hi there, man!
Adriano Meirinho (21:33:10): I'm listening, brother.
Daniel Siarkowski (21:33:55): Everything fine!!!?
Adriano Meirinho (21:37:57): Yea, and you?
Adriano Meirinho (21:39:22): hehe... things fucked up at Curriculum, they blocked my account and are accusing me of spamming... hahheaehahea
Daniel Siarkowski (21:39:53): ohhh gosh... what a fuck, man!!! heheehe but it was a foul play against those guys.. hehehehe
Adriano Meirinho (21:41:01): hehehe The guys will call me up... in my cell phone...hehehe I'll pretend I don't understand them
Daniel Siarkowski (21:41:40): hehhehe but what happened?? You just kept sending e-mails? Something like that? Or was it because you used it many times?
Adriano Meirinho (21:42:13): 'cause I made too many requests there... I viewed over 300 thousand cvs in one week :)
Daniel Siarkowski (21:43:10): hehehe You can pretend you're opening a giant multinational affiliated to IBM and want to hire half the city of Campinas, why not? ...hehehehehe
Adriano Meirinho (21:44:24): heheheh Damn!
Daniel Siarkowski (21:46:00): ..."Meirinho Organizations, Incorporated"... say you want to be their partner and that you think their site is very good, found everyone you needed and is pleased with the content... hehehe
Transcribed from the data in the expert report – Volume 01 of 14 – Attachment A – Pages 53 to 55
The case is still in trial court but is considered by jurists as a watershed in Brazilian Justice, not only because substantial and abundant evidence has been found in the defendant's computers but also because of the final amount of the matter in controversy, which is the highest amount ever judged in a lawsuit for "digital piracy". The Brazilian press had released the news all over the country:
O ESTADO DE S. PAULO
http://economia.estadao.com.br/noticias/neg%C3%83%C2%B3cios,justica-condena-grupo-catho-por-roubo-de-dados,78486,0.htm?concatena=economia.estadao.com.br/noticias/neg%C3%B3cios,justica-condena-grupo-catho-por-roubo-de-dados,78486,0.htm
VEJA
http://veja.abril.com.br/noticia/vida-digital/justica-condena-grupo-catho-por-roubo-de-dados--2
EXAME
http://exame.abril.com.br/negocios/empresas/noticias/justica-condena-grupo-catho-por-roubo-de-dados
ÉPOCA NEGÓCIOS
http://epocanegocios.globo.com/Revista/Common/0,,EMI254301-16355,00-JUSTICA%20CONDENA%20GRUPO%20CATHO%20POR%20ROUBO%20DE%20DADOS.html?concatena=epocanegocios.globo.com/Revista/Common/0,,EMI254301-16355,00-JUSTICA+CONDENA+GRUPO+CATHO+POR+ROUBO+DE+DADOS.html
*http://www.curriculum.com.br/imprensa/releases/i_00_01.asp?materia=3011&ano=2009&mes=10&tipo_link_camada=1
About Curriculum.com.br
Curriculum.com.br is the largest employment site in Brazil, holds the largest talent database in Latin America and has the largest number of advertised vacancies.
It is the largest meeting place for professionals and companies in the Brazilian Internet, and works with free posting of résumés and assists the applicants seeking redeployment. It provides no-cost vacancy advertising for companies, makes available a detailed search of applicant profiles and manages the recruitment and selection processes, and is the pioneer in offering the best of technology in the segment.
Currently, it has over 6 million unique applicants registered, over 100 thousand user companies and over 500 thousand available vacancies. Every 1 minute and 58 seconds, one applicant informs that he has been hired.
A job seeker, upon registering with Curriculum, is given a Unique Curriculum Number (UCN), a code identifying him in the site and facilitating his registration with the companies that use the UCN system.
With the slogan “Illuminating Talents”, Curriculum's mission is to make the résumés registered in the site more and more visible to the companies that seek good applicants. Curriculum revolutionized the way of finding jobs and professionals.
For more information about Curriculum, visit: www.curriculum.com.br
Curriculum.com.brFone: (11) 2344-1111
E-mail:
imprensa@curriculum.com.br
