Out-Law News 1 min. read

US newspapers to battle over headline copyright in court


A small regional newspaper publisher in the US is suing The New York Times Company over the online republication of news headlines. The case could help to define at what point republication becomes copyright infringement.Summary

GateHouse Media owns 125 newspapers in Massachusetts, the US state in which Boston is located. The New York Times Company (NYT Co) owns The Boston Globe and Boston.com.

GateHouse has said that Boston.com's republishing of its headlines and the first sentence of news stories without permission is copyright infringement. The NYT Co has said that the lawsuit is without merit.

"[NYT Co] is reproducing, displaying and distributing on the infringing website unauthorised verbatim copies of newspaper article headlines and the first sentences thereof," said GateHouse's suit. "[The NYT Co] is offering [GateHouse's] copyrighted material on the infringing website without [The NYT Co's] express or implied permission, in violation of the United States copyright and trademark laws."

The stories on Boston.com carried links straight to the story at the relevant Gatehouse website as well as accreditation. In its lawsuit, Gatehouse said that the accreditation made it seem as though the practice had the approval of Gatehouse.

The suit said that the use of GateHouse Media newspaper titles was "causing confusion and mistake among users of the infringing website as to the source of origin and endorsement of content posted there".

The NYT Co said that such links are the basis of the internet.

"Far from being illegal or improper, this practice of linking to sites is common and is familiar to anyone who has searched the web," said a company statement, according to the NYT Co-owned Boston Globe. "It is fair and benefits both web users and the originating site."

Disputes have long raged about how much of one media outlet's material another can use online.

In 1997 two newspapers on the remote Shetland Islands fought over one's use of headlines from the other's website. The dispute was settled out of court when it was agreed that any stories be attributed.

More recently, news aggregation site Google News ran into legal trouble in Belgium when newspaper trade body Copiepresse sued it over its use of headlines and news story first paragraphs.

It argued that the use of this material constituted copyright infringement, and it won its case in the Belgian Court of First Instance in February 2007.

"We confirm that the activities of Google News, the reproduction and publication of headlines as well as short extracts, and the use of Google's cache, the publicly available data storage of articles and documents, violate the law on authors' rights," the ruling said, according to a translation from news agency AP.

GateHouse's case was due to be heard in early January, but both sides have agreed to postpone the case until the end of the month, according to The Boston Globe.

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