Monitoring firm loses copyright case

A federal judge ruled for The Associated Press on Wednesday in its lawsuit challenging the use of story excerpts by Meltwater U.S. Holdings Inc. and its Meltwater News Service.

The AP sued the company, which monitors the media for corporate customers, last year, alleging that it copies AP content and sells it to clients without paying AP licensing fees.

“This ruling makes it crystal clear that Meltwater wrongly used news content from AP to create its own content, while paying none of the costs associated with creating original news content,” said Gary Pruitt, AP’s president and chief executive.

“This is an important ruling for AP and others in the news business who work so hard to provide high-quality original news reports on which the public relies,” Mr. Pruitt said.

In a statement issued Thursday, San Franciscobased Meltwater said it was disappointed and promised an appeal.

“We’re considering all of our options, but we look forward to having this decision reviewed by the Court of Appeals, which we are confident will see the case a different way,” said Jorn Lyseggen, Meltwater’s founder and chief executive.

The suit mirrors a similar action in Canada.

In June 2011, a group of Canadian news publishers including Postmedia Network Inc. (which owns the National Post among other newspapers), The Globe and Mail Inc., Toronto Star Newspapers Ltd., Sun Media Corp. and Le Devoir Inc. initiated a lawsuit against Meltwater, alleging copyright infringement, seeking an injunction and damages against the media monitoring service.

Since then, The Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star as well as Metroland Media Group Ltd. have pulled out of the litigation.

Meltwater filed no defence but did bring a motion to strike the claim. The group of publishers brought its own motion for a confidentiality order and both were heard in July 2012. The judge did not make a ruling at that time and the suit has been under case management since that time, with the parties attending confidential conferences.

Peter Henein, a lawyer with Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP in Toronto, represents the Canadian publishers.

“Meltwater was found to have infringed copyright, so it’s absolutely a positive,” Mr. Henein said Thursday of the decision in the U.S. case.

In the AP lawsuit, the news service alleged that Meltwater News had been pilfering current and past material from the AP and other news providers.

U.S. District Judge Denise Cote announced her decision in the case Wednesday, but its details were not immediately released publicly. She said in an order that the AP’s request for a decision in its favour before any trial had been granted, “with one exception” that she did not specify.

Ms. Cote said she would release the ruling publicly after lawyers notified her Thursday whether they believe anything needed to be redacted.