Surprise-surprise – the Newspaper Licensing Agency (NLA), representing eight UK national publishers, is contesting news alert service Meltwater’s case that its new web licenses are unfair.
The company has referred the NLA to the Copyright Tribunal, an independent body charged with settling IP disputes, seeking an undoing of a new scheme it introduced on January 1 that compels commercial news monitoring services to pay for the online articles they present to PR clients.
But the NLA said on Thursday it had written to the tribunal, explaining “without having taken a licence, Meltwater News is not entitled to seek a review of the NLA