Lawfirm looked at party’s web site and found documents which were supposed to be protected.

"Although the archived pages were supposed to be shielded from public view, the protections failed and lawyers at Harding Earley Follmer & Frailey in Valley Forge, Pa., did not hack their way in, Eastern District of Pennsylvania Judge Robert Kelly Jr. ruled last week on summary judgment.

"They did not ‘pick the lock’ and avoid or bypass the protective measure, because there was no lock to pick," Kelly wrote in Healthcare Advocates Inc. v. Harding Earley Follmer & Frailey, No. 05-3524. "Nor did the Harding firm steal passwords to get around a protective barrier. … The Harding firm could not ‘avoid’ or ‘bypass’ a digital wall that was not there."

The ruling, if it stands, wards off a potential judgment of $3 million in damages a patients’ advocacy company sought from the firm.

The company, Healthcare Advocates Inc. of Philadelphia, alleged that Harding Earley lawyers violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act by fetching protected pages using the "Wayback Machine," a search tool provided by Internet Archive, a San Francisco-based Web page archivist.

Harding Earley represented a rival company, Health Advocate Inc. of Plymouth Meeting, Pa., which Healthcare Advocates accused of stealing trade secrets. Healthcare Advocates also sued Internet Archive for failing to properly protect Web pages that Healthcare Advocates no longer wanted to be available for public view.