Associated Press sues ‘parasitic’ news agency over licensing claim

Associated Press is suing a digital news agency, claiming that it uses unlicensed content without paying licence fees. AP, which claims to be the world’s biggest news agency, said on Tuesday it had filed a lawsuit against Meltwater News in a district court in Manhattan. Meltwater News allows its clients to monitor breaking news stories from around the world, including content from AP and other agencies. AP is seeking an injunction and substantial damages from Meltwater News in the copyright infringement action. Tom Curley, outgoing chief executive of AP, accused Meltwater News of a “parasitic” use of content produced by news agencies. AP claimed in its court filing that Meltwater News refuses to pay licence fees for the content it allows users to monitor in the US. The Norway-based firm also has a “vast archive” of AP stories dating back to 2007 which users can store and access despite them not being available online, according to the filing. AP has fought a long-running battle against websites and search engines listing its content. In 2009, the agency went head-to-head with Google over its Google News index, but has since struck licensing deals with the search giant and other internet portals such as Yahoo and AOL.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/feb/14/associated-press-sues-digital-agency?newsfeed=true

Viacom courted YouTube before launching $1bn piracy lawsuit

Faced with claims that it encourages piracy, YouTube accuses its rival of sour grapes – as well as claiming it ran covert operations to upload thousands of videos to the site

American media conglomerate Viacom considered buying YouTube just months before it launched a USD 1bn piracy lawsuit against the video sharing site, according to court documents. Files released Thursday by a US court suggest that the television giant – which owns channels including MTV, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central – had considered purchasing YouTube in 2006 in what executives said could prove a “transformative acquisition”. That deal was scotched when YouTube was bought later that year by internet leviathan Google for USD 1.65bn – shortly before Viacom launched its billion-dollar lawsuit accusing YouTube of “massive intentional copyright infringement”. The claims have come to light after the US court hearing the case unsealed hundreds of documents as it prepares to make a ruling on Viacom’s claims. Lawyers have been arguing the case, which experts say could redefine the relationship between media and internet companies, behind closed doors since 2007 – but the court’s move has made the astonishing revelations from both sides public for the first time

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/mar/18/viacom-youtube-documents

Court’s patent ruling won’t keep Microsoft Word off the shelves

Alas and alack, this ruling doesn’t spell doom for Microsoft Word

Pay no attention to headlines predicting that Microsoft Word will be banished from store shelves on Jan. 11 because of a patent ruling. The widely used word processor isn’t going anywhere; nor does Tuesday’s ruling by the D.C.-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit represent any sort of earth-shattering development in patent law. Tuesday’s ruling upholds a judge’s injunction issued after a district court jury found that a feature in Word 2007, and the Office 2007 suite that includes Word, infringed a patent held by i4i, a Toronto software developer. The feature in question governs how programs deal with a specialized data format called XML, short for extensible markup language. It’s arguable, as Computerworld writer Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols writes, that i4i never should have received this patent in the first place. But there also seems to be solid evidence that Microsoft knew about i4i’s work before adding these features to Word. Either way, though, Microsoft is already moving to get out of the box the court’s ruling put it in. In a statement issued earlier Tuesday, the company said it “had put the wheels in motion to remove this little-used feature” from Word before the Jan. 11 deadline. The statement added that Microsoft’s upcoming Word 2010 and Office 2010 “do not contain the technology covered by the injunction.” So here’s the upshot: Microsoft spends some time and money removing a feature most people don’t use but doesn’t have to stop selling its product, i4i gets a moment in the headlines and a decent payday, patent lawyers rack up billable hours, and most consumers never notice the difference.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/22/AR2009122203107.html?hpid=sec-tech