The Associated Press has sued Meltwater News in a New York court, alleging copyright infringement and so-called hot news misappropriation.
The complaint came the same day that the UK’s Copyright Tribunal gave an interim decision in the dispute between the Newspaper Licensing Agency (NLA) and Meltwater.
AP president and CEO Tom Curley called Meltwater “a parasitic distribution service that competes directly with traditional news sources without paying license fees to cover the costs of creating those stories”.
The complaint accuses Meltwater of distributing verbatim AP content to paying customers and therefore directly competing with the AP. It claims copyright infringement, contributory copyright infringement, vicarious copyright infringement, hot news misappropriation, removal of copyright management information, and seeks a declaratory judgment.
“AP bears all of the extensive costs associated with creating its content, while Meltwater bears only the minimal costs of electronic distribution – thus permitting it to undercut AP with lower subscription rates through its infringing activities,” said an AP press release.
However, the news service emphasised that it is not attacking news aggregators generally. Meltwater has attempted to align itself with aggregators such as Google, but the AP said that Meltwater provides “lengthier and more systematic excerpts from AP stories than most news aggregators, particularly with regard to AP breaking news articles”.
The AP also objects to Meltwater’s service allowing customers to store excerpts and full-text articles in an archive on the Meltwater server.
“Meltwater is not a typical news aggregator,” said AP acting general counsel, Laura Malone. “Most notably, Meltwater is a closed system sold only to subscribers for a fee, and not a means of expanding public access,” explained the release.
On its website, Meltwater calls itself “more than a traditional media monitoring service, combining the industry's broadest search capabilities, exclusive analytical tools and a consultative relationship with its clients”.
Elizabeth McNamara of Davis Wright Tremaine filed the suit on behalf of the AP.