AP suing Moreover over copyrighted news

according to Editor and Publisher, "willfully misappropriating"

[weeks]

The Associated Press said today that it is suing online news distributor Moreover and its parent company VeriSign. The news cooperative is seeking to stop the companies from accessing and publishing AP material and infringing on copyrights and trademarks.

Moreover claims that AP is a source for its major news coverage, according to AP. "This suit is about two companies that are willfully misappropriating and infringing upon AP's proprietary news reports on a continuous basis, and are falsely associating themselves with AP, to operate and promote their fee-based and ad-supported services, which they promise will deliver real-time news in as fast as two minutes of publication," Srinandan Kasi, AP vice president and general counsel, said in a statement.

[editorandpublisher.com...]

[bill]

I was wondering when something like this would happen. This has been going on for years now. Is the AP just now getting it?

[Brett_Tabke]

I thought moreover only did headlines?

[bill]

That's the free service...or used to be. The paid feeds offered more.

[weeks]

Finally, AP is getting serious. The outfit is focused on getting out the news. The board, made up of other news organizations, has not focused on making money. AP's CEO is a news guy, not a money guy.

Once, member newspapers got the online feeds for next to free. Free, as we have learned with the web, can work with ads but the member/owners of Associated Press didn't allow AP to sell ads--they wanted to sell the ads. Even Google's ads. That left the Associated Press with few sources of income.

The deal where Google and Yahoo paid for the news was a major step for the organization because now they have income and you can get the news--and AP can now get serious with the "owner/members" who were once the gatekeepers to the public but are no longer.

Question: If you are the executive at Google or Yahoo who agreed to pay AP a pretty penny for the news and you discover that Moreover is sending AP's stuff out at no cost to other web sites, the next time you were on the phone with your good buddy at AP, would you mention that?

You can see the text of AP's lawsuit and their evidence at
[paidcontent.org...]

[weeks]

Brett, it appears to be about the headlines.

...Moreover's activities do not qualify (under fair use) because, among other things, they merely copy AP's headlines and offer no transformative value.

More here:
[easybourse.com...]

[np2003]

wow does that mean RSS feeds are risky business now? :o

[eventus]

You can't simply rip off headlines and provide it to others and now Moreover/Verisign will be at the pointy end of a very expensive lawsuit.

They will likely settle this as quickly as they can for tens to hundreds of millions

AHN Media also has a similar suit pending apparently against Moreover for the same behaviour.

[Brett_Tabke]

> You can't simply rip off headlines and provide it to others

Sure you can. The search engines have been doing it for more than a decade now. Many even republish the entire page with their branding own ad at the top and call it caching.

[eventus]

Google was sued by AFP and AP and settled rather than letter the matter go to court.

Yahoo pays for the rights

Ask pays as well.

MSN/Live - Not sure, I think that they not paying... yet...

Cacheing has some significant case law against it as well.

Moreover is in a bad position here and they know it. This case will not likely go to trial 12-16 months from now there will be a settlement with Moreover paying lots of money.

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