This could potentially become a landmark case! It will boil down to the interpretation of contracts and their TOS. Assuming Twitter legal has done its job in keeping the terms tight, this could fall in Twitters favor. We'll see what happens..

"PeopleBrowsr Wins Temporary Restraining Order Compelling Twitter to Provide Firehose Access"

San Francisco, CA (November 28, 2012)

PeopleBrowsr and Twitter appeared in San Francisco Superior Court today. PeopleBrowsr won a restraining order compelling Twitter to provide full Firehose access. The court rejected Twitter’s contention that the application was without merit. A hearing date for a preliminary injunction has been set for January 8th, 2013.

“Today’s decision was a good result,” said Jodee Rich, Founder and CEO of PeopleBrowsr. “We relied on Twitter’s promise of openness when we invested millions of dollars and thousands of hours of development time,” said Rich. “Long term supply is essential as this industry matures. We made this application to ensure full unrestricted access to the Firehose for our Enterprise and Government clients.”