AP sues Meltwater News alleging copyright offense

NEW YORK (AP) — The Associated Press is suing a digital news distributor, claiming it infringed on AP copyrights.

The complaint, filed Tuesday in New York federal court, alleges that Meltwater U.S. Holding Inc. and its Meltwater News Service have been illegally selling AP content.

The suit alleges that Meltwater News has been pilfering current and past material from the AP and other news providers without paying licensing fees.

Meltwater News, based in San Francisco, began 11 years ago in Oslo, Norway, according to its website. Calls to the company were not immediately returned.

The AP has complained about websites improperly lifting content for years. In 2009, the not-for-profit news cooperative threatened to take legal action against Google Inc.

AP now has content licensing agreements with Google and other companies, including Yahoo and AOL.

 

UPDATE:  7/03/2012

Meltwater Group commented on this article as follows:

I just wanted to reach out to you about your recent AP / Meltwater blog post as I really appreciate the effort you made to provide an objective and balanced piece.  However, I was wondering if you could possibly update it as there are some inaccuracies within it borne out of the AP lawsuit’s media statement that I see is the source for your piece.

I’ve outlined the main points below, but would really appreciate the opportunity to either discuss with you or to have the post updated to provide more context and our point of view, if that’s ok? We’re just seeking balance as this is a sensitive legal issue.

Namely, AP has shown that it does not understand our Meltwater News service.  We do not provide copies of AP articles; we instead we provide links to these articles.  We only link to publicly available content and there is no content stored by us – instead, we provide an archive of search results with links to where the article was originally published online.

What is also disappointing is that we found out about the lawsuit via the media.  We would like to open a dialogue with AP, but they never made contact with us or asked us to take a license from them.

Furthermore, AP used DHS as an example of a client that has left AP for Meltwater.  DHS is not, and have never been a client of Meltwater News.

It’s important to understand that we are not in the business of sharing content, but rather in the business of sharing the knowledge of the existence of online content.  Therefore helping to drive traffic to these publisher’s sites.  Our media statement in response to the AP suit also covers this here:

http://www.meltwater.com/about/press-room/news-releases/media-alert-meltwater-response-to-ap-suit.

Also, the recent UK licensing dispute with the NLA was never a case of refusing to pay a license.  We disagree in principle but agreed to pay for a license.  The legal dispute has been borne out of the NLA forcing a second hyperlink tax…this license fee is demanded from end users of ALL online media monitoring services, not just ourselves.  Again, more context is available here on this particular issue: http://www.meltwater.com/about/press-room/news-releases/uk-copyright-tribunal-verdict.  Please also click on the links towards the end of this media statement as it will help provide some historical context – particularly the FAQ.

I hope this helps clarify – happy to discuss any part of it with you.

Regards

Dan Purvis

Director, PR

Communications

 

Meltwater Group

T: + 44.207.183.7826

M: + 44.7801.424.454

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