Finally, the court found that federal copyright law did not
preempt the claims of tortious interference with prospective business
advantage or unfair business practices.34 Ticketmaster
claimed that its advertisers pay on the basis of the number of
hits to the home page, and will not pay for hits to deep pages. It
alleged that Tickets.com implemented its deep links for the purpose
of decreasing Ticketmaster’s advertising revenue, tortiously
interfering with Ticketmaster’s prospective business advantage.35
The unfair business practices claim, that Tickets.com
took and published otherwise unprotectable factual data from
Ticketmaster, escaped preemption by virtue of an allegation of
false advertising