Until a few months ago, Pavel Yurevich was a self-professed fan of Southwest Airlines who would spend hours on the carrier’s website searching for the lowest fares, even on itineraries he’d already booked.

“I was flying a lot and knowing that I could exchange tickets with Southwest to get a cheaper deal if the price goes down was always on the top of my mind,” said Yurevich, describing how he’d make use of Southwest’s famous lack of ticket change fees. “I would check every day. ‘Have the prices dropped?’ Because sometimes savings could be very substantial.”

Eventually, Yurevich, who works in the technology industry in Washington state, and his business partner Chase Roberts automated this search and decided to bring its money-saving potential to a wider audience with their website SWMonkey.com.

The service, which scraped data automatically from Southwest’s website, allowed users to sign up for alerts that notified them when prices dropped on a flight they’ve already booked, charging them $3 if rebooking saves the user at least $10.

A screen capture of SWMonkey.com taken on Jan. 9, 2018.

Their endeavor, which launched in early November, lasted less than two weeks before catching the eyes of Southwest’s attorneys, prompting a series of cease-and-desist letters to the two co-founders.

Now, the two sides are squaring off in court, with Yurevich and Roberts filing a federal lawsuit in Utah seeking to affirm their right to operate the site. Meanwhile, Southwest has filed a lawsuit of its own against the two and their company, Roundpipe LLC, in North Texas federal court, alleging violation of its trademarks, computer fraud and breach of contract for violating the terms and conditions of its website.

“The smooth and secure operation of Southwest.com is a key part of our customer service experience, so we restrict the use of automated scraping tools on Southwest.com,” the Dallas-based carrier said in a statement. “After repeated attempts to resolve issues with the Southwest Monkey website, Southwest is now pursuing claims associated with violations of our website terms and the unauthorized use of our trademarks.”

The legal battle shows the lengths to which Southwest will go to protect its popular brand and control how its fare information is displayed.

It also strikes at a deeper debate over whether fare and schedule data should be considered public information, an issue that has pitted travel booking websites in favor of more accessibility against airlines seeking to protect and control how and where fare information is displayed and monetized.

Southwest is particularly concerned about use of the scraping tool to automatically collect what it describes in its lawsuit as “proprietary fare data,” alleging that the method creates “substantial” traffic to its website with no intention of booking tickets.

In the lawsuit, the company’s attorneys said the legal action is meant to prevent Southwest Monkey from restarting its operations, as well as deterring “even more companies” who might “target and use the Southwest websites for their own business purposes, without Southwest’s consent.”

For their part, Yurevich and Roberts have discontinued their service, although the website still exists with a brief explanation of their ongoing dispute with Southwest.

"In the couple weeks that we were on-line, we were able to save customers more than 43,000 points and $550 dollars, and have made $45. Southwest Airlines has sent us a number of cease and desist letters demanding that we shut down our website 'immediately,'" the note to readers say. "Because our $45 will not go very far in fighting litigation in federal court in Dallas, we have decided to save ourselves the headache and have shut down the service."

In their own lawsuit against the company, Yurevich and Roberts ask the court to rule that their website did not violate Southwest’s trademarks, arguing that customers won’t confuse SWMonkey.com as being affiliated with Southwest.

Yurevich said Southwest’s lawsuit against of a website that operated for less than two weeks and saved customers money has left the pair feeling “bullied.”

“It’s really kind of unfortunate that this is happening,” he said. “We’re not a threat to their business in any way.”