Here is the full UK Court of Appeal judgement in the case in which the public relations industry and a commercial PR news monitor have failed to overturn a judgement that they must pay to process and receive summaries of newspaper website articles…
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Key points to follow…
Meltwater News (provides) “a hyperlink to each relevant article, the headline from the article, the opening words of the article … and an extract from the article showing the context in which the (search term) appears”.
“It is not disputed that the operation of Internet Protocol is such that, when an end user … accesses a Publisher’s website …, then copies are generated on the end user’s computer.”
“The acts of reproduction are those occasioned by the voluntary human process of accessing that webpage.”
“It is not the case that every recipient and/or user of Meltwater News will inevitably infringe the copyright so as to require a license … but there cannot be many of them.”
NLA had argued website T&Cs tell end users their liabilities. PRCA countered that users don’t see T&Cs until accessing and copying the web page in question. Judge says: “I do not consider that it is necessary to enter in to that controversy.”