Associated Press v. Meltwater News [1]

On February 14, 2012, the Associated Press (AP) filed a lawsuit in federal court against Meltwater News, Inc. AP alleges multiple counts of copyright infringment, as well as hot news misappropriation and 17 U.S.C. § 1202 (b) [2] removal/alteration of copyright information.

AP's complaint focuses on Meltwater News Service,  which Meltwater describes [3] as an "online media monitoring" service. AP alleges that Meltwater News infringes AP's rights by storing complete copies of AP stories, circulating "substantial verbatim excerpts" of those stories in newsletters and email reports, allowing Meltwater subscribers to access, save, edit, and distribute the full text of articles, and preparing unauthorized translations of the articles.

The complaint draws a distinction between Meltwater News and other news aggregators like Google News: Meltwater charges subscribers a "substantial annual fee," and unlike other services that "drive traffic to legitimately licensed sites," Meltwater News's users archive the AP articles directly on Meltwater's site. Thus, AP alleges that Meltwater News is a "directly competing product [built] on the backs of news organizations like the AP."

Thus, AP alleges:

• Direct copyright infringement based on Meltwater's use of AP content;
• contributory copyright infringement based on Meltwater's customers' ability to copy AP content;
• vicarious copyright infringment based on Meltwater's profiting from, and ability to control, customers' infringement;
• hot news misappropriation based on Meltwater's competition with AP for subscribers; and
• 17 U.S.C. § 1202 (b) [2] violations based on Meltwater's customers' ability to remove or edit credit lines and copyright notices included in AP articles.

AP also seeks a declaratory judgment that Meltwater News constitutes infringment of AP's copyrights.

AP included with its complaint exhibits [4] documenting the allegedly-infringed content and some of Meltwater's promotional materials describing Meltwater News.

Update:

On April 6, 2012, Meltwater answered [5], denying AP's claims of copyright infringement, hot news misappropriation, and removal of copyright management information. The answer raised a series of defenses, including copyright misuse, fair use, substantial non-infringing use doctrine, implied license, First Amendment defense, DMCA safe harbor, and immunity from a "hot news" claim through copyright preemption and under § 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Meltwater also raised a series of counterclaims, including a declaration of non-infringement and safe-harbor under the DMCA, libel (based on AP's press release following the complaint), and tortious interference with business relations.

 On May 15, 2012, AP answered [6] Meltwater's counterclaims. AP asserted that Meltwater does not qualify for DMCA safe-harbor protection due to failure to register an agent before the complaint was filed, that the tortious interference claim is duplicative of the libel claim, and that all statements made in the press release were protected under the First Amendment and Article 1 § 8 of the New York State Constitution, as well as a "fair report" under § 74 of the New York Civil Rights Law [7].