NEW YORK -- The U.S. District Court for the Southern District, in Manhattan, ruled today that Meltwater News infringed the use of AP content, according to a release from AP. The court granted AP’s motion for summary judgment in the suit, denying Meltwater’s.
AP had filed suit against Meltwater in February 2012, claiming copyright infringement. Meltwater uses unlicensed AP content verbatim to produce a service for paying customers that competes directly with AP, the suit said. Last month, six publishers and news organizations--including The New York Times Co., Gannett Co. and the Newspaper Association of America--filed an amicus brief in support of AP.
“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 president and CEO. “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.”
AP interim General Counsel Laura Malone said: “We have not seen the entire opinion yet, but we are thrilled with the decision.”
A subscriber-only service, Meltwater distributes “Meltwater News,” an electronic clipping service that guarantees “no copyright fees.” Paying customers get substantial verbatim excerpts of AP stories, and those of other media. Meltwater also offers its customers the ability to store the excerpts in an archive housed on their server.
