Associated Press v. Meltwater U.S. Holdings, Inc.
Associated Press v. Meltwater U.S. Holdings, Inc. (S.D.N.Y. March 21, 2013) was a district court case in which the Associated Press (AP) brought suit against Meltwater Group in U.S. (Meltwater) for clipping and sharing news items under copyright infringement and "hot news" misappropriation under New York common law. In a cross-motion for summary judgement, Meltwater argued they were not infringing under the requirements of fair use. Meltwater claimed that their service was transformative and therefore non-infringing on copyright. The court held that Meltwater's copying was not protected under the fair use doctrine and it was infringing on AP's copyright.[1]
A parallel case filed on the same grounds in the UK, however, was decided the other way in 2013 (in favor of Meltwater and against the equivalent newspaper licensing business) by the UK Supreme Court, subject to questions referred to the European Court of Justice and intended to clarify matters of a cross-border nature.
The Associated Press (AP) was founded in 1846 as a not-for-profit news organization that published original content and photographs. The company received its funds from various subscribing newspaper and broadcasting companies. Licensing fees accounted for hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue for the Associated Press, and each contract was crafted to grant specific permissions of redistribution, clipping, etc. to each license holder. Each article was carefully sourced, researched, and edited. In addition, each article contained a lede, a concise concentration of key information, which "takes significant journalistic skill to craft."[1] The Associated Press obtained a registered copyright on some of their articles, thirty-three of which were identified to be relevant to this case (Registered Articles). In addition to licensing, AP offered numerous products including "AP Exchange," which allowed licensees to access content by searching for keywords and other metadata.[2]
