Financial firm sued for re-packaging software company's service

Massachusetts software company NewRiver Inc. has sued financial research firm Morningstar Inc. for allegedly using NewRiver's proprietary technology to amass a database of US Securities and Exchange Commission Prospectuses.

Morningstar is accused of "screen scraping" NewRiver's Prospectus Express, a subscription service that catalogs compliance documents for mutual funds, variable annuity and variable life products. The suit claims Morningstar accessed the service some 130,000 times between May 1 and December 3.

"We think the lawsuit has one purpose: to discourage Morningstar from competing with NewRiver," a spokesperson told Reuters, "We did not use any NewRiver technology, data or information to create or market our product. We did not access the data through password-protected sites.