The UK’s Copyright Tribunal today gave an interim decision in the dispute between the Newspaper Licensing Agency (NLA) and web indexing service Meltwater.
The Tribunal was called on to judge what licensing fees Meltwater should pay to the NLA, which collects royalties for commercial use on behalf of national and local newspapers in the UK.
After weighing up considerable evidence in a 260-paragraph judgment, Tribunal chair Colin Birss said: “We have rejected the submission that the fees to be charged should be purely nominal in nature. We also find that the level of future fixed fees proposed by the NLA would be much too high.”
It therefore said that most of the future fees should be lower than the NLA had proposed. This would require the relevant licences to be redrafted, and the Tribunal will issue a final decision within two months with the confirmed licences.
In the case, Meltwater argued that its service was not substantively different from that provided by Google News, which does not pay a licence to the NLA. But the NLA said Google was not comparable.
The UK Supreme Court has also agreed to hear an appeal in a related dispute between the parties, and this is expected later this year.
Henry Carr QC and Ben Allgrove, with Baker & McKenzie, acted for Meltwater. Robwert Howe QC, Edmund Cullen, instructed by Berwin Leighton Paisner, represented the NLA and Tom Weisselberg, with Bird & Bird, acted for the Media Monitoring Association.