Briefing.com paid a “substantial amount” and admitted liability to settle a lawsuit involving the unauthorized republication of news headlines and articles from Dow Jones & Co., the parent of The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s and Marketwatch.com, according to a Dow Jones statement released Monday.
In settling the lawsuit, Briefing.com admitted that copying and republishing portions of more than 100 articles violated Dow Jones’s rights under the Copyright Act. In addition, Briefing.com admitted violating Dow Jones’s rights under the “hot news” misappropriation doctrine by systematically republishing time-sensitive Dow Jones content.
“Dow Jones is committed to aggressively pursuing legal action to prevent the unauthorized use of our content,” said Mark H. Jackson, general counsel for Dow Jones, in a statement. “This settlement demonstrates that such actions are not resolved with a simple slap on the wrist, but have significant financial repercussions.”
Dow Jones filed the lawsuit in April in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in response to Briefing.com’s alleged misappropriation of Dow Jones headlines and articles. The misappropriated content, which was first published on the leading real-time financial newswire Dow Jones Newswires, also included news from The Journal and Barron’s.
In addition to admitting liability and paying to resolve this matter, Briefing is permanently enjoined from infringing Dow Jones’ copyrights in its content. The final judgment in the case was entered on Monday. The financial terms of the settlement were not disclosed.
