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Dow Jones Settles ?Hot News? Content-Infringement Lawsuit

By Stephanie Robinson

On November 15, 2010, Dow Jones & Company, Inc. settled a lawsuit it had filed against Briefing.com for Briefing.com?s systematic republishing of more than 100 time-sensitive Dow Jones articles. Dow Jones had alleged that Briefing.com?s actions constituted both ?traditional? copyright infringement as well as an infringement of Dow Jones? rights under the so-called ?hot news? doctrine. That doctrine originally was formulated by the Supreme Court in 1918 to address a competitor?s re-distribution of briefly valuable, time-sensitive ?facts? that otherwise might not be copyrightable. A copy of Dow Jones? complaint is available here. The ?hot news? doctrine has seen a resurgence in interest in recent years due to the ever-expanding volume of reported facts on the Internet. However, with so-called copyright ?trolls? now starting to aggressively pursue alleged infringers, the doctrine has the potential to be abused by those in search of a windfall, and it will be interesting to see if the courts or Congress takes action to curb its applicability. While Briefing.com?s liability appears to have been the results of actions taken by the company, rather than by the company?s online users, Internet content providers nevertheless should work with counsel to address any areas of doubt regarding compliance with laws that may affect their liability for published content. For example, the safe harbor provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) allow providers to escape liability for contributory copyright infringement based on information posted by the providers? users, but only if the providers meet certain statutory requirements under the Act. One of those requirements is registration of a designated agent for copyright claims. That registration must be made with the U.S. Copyright Office and must be accompanied by a $105 fee, which is a small price to pay for a measure of security from copyright ?trolls.? More information regarding the registration process ? including the registration application ? is available here.

Full post as published by Business and Technology Law on December 10, 2010 (boomark / email).