Major Publishers Back AP in Licensing Lawsuit

February 27, 2013 Chad Bolender Leave a Comment

New developments are unfolding in the Associated Press lawsuit against monitoring company Meltwater. The suit alleges that Meltwater is copying and selling licensed content without compensating content publishers. This week, several papers have filed amicus briefs on behalf of the AP, saying that their business would be adversely affected if companies are allowed to redistribute content without appropriate licensing fees.

As CBS reports:

The Times and other companies — including USA Today publisher Gannett (GCI), The McClatchy, (MNI) and Advance Publications — said in court papers filed late Monday that their businesses would be jeopardized if Meltwater’s activities were allowed to continue. The publishers argue that their websites and other digital businesses that generate revenue through advertising, subscriptions and licensing fees are threatened if other companies can distribute their content without paying licensing fees.

“None of these revenue streams can be sustained if news organizations are unable to protect their news reports from the wholesale copying and redistribution by free-riders like Meltwater,” the filing said.

Also joining in the friend-of-the-court brief was BurrellesLuce, a Meltwater competitor, that says it is at a disadvantage because it pays to license content that Meltwater takes for free.

Moreover Technologies is developing Metabase Premium in conjunction with publishers, which provides full access to premium content without any legal, compliance, or administrative wrangling.

We will be commenting here as the case progresses.

Filed under: media monitoring

Tags: ap, burrellesluce, Meltwater