The legal feud between IT recruitment site, Jobserve and the publisher of a rival job board, Skillsite, continued this month.

An out-of-court settlement between the two companies gave Jobserve one-day online access to Skillsite to ensure the latter was not using CVs lifted from Jobserve.

Jobserve alleged in court that the publisher, RDL, had used information from its site and asked for a policing order allowing unlimited supervision of Skillsite’s valuable database of candidates. Robbie Cowling, Jobserve’s managing director, obtained the court order after it was alleged that RDL had breached an agreement reached in a previous case.

The original agreement required RDL to send Jobserve CDs of its database to allow Cowling to check Skillsite for stolen CVs.

But Cowling said he had been unhappy with the quality of the information provided by RDL and wanted unlimited online access to monitor Skillsite.

Cowling said: “They gave an undertaking not to put data on their site and we went back to court to get a policing order.”

However, Andy Richards, group managing director of RDL claimed the case, held at the Justice Chancery Division of the High Court on 14 May, was a victory for his company.

“[Robbie Cowling] got the ability to get CDs with a copy of our database and supervised limited access to our site. He asked for unlimited, unsupervised access.”

Richards said RDL reached the agreement to allow Jobserve limited access in an out-of-court settlement after Mr Justice Lloyd refused Cowling’s original request.

Jobserve this month cancelled its London job fair on 17–18 May because of a lack of interest from recruitment agencies.

Cowling said he would have been able to run the fair profitably because of interest from suppliers, but there would have been so few agencies there that IT job hunters would have been disappointed.