Categories: OLD Media Moves

Briefing.com settles case with Dow Jones & Co.

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.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.

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View Comments

Janette Levey Frisch says:
November 16, 2010 at 1:56 pm
Cases like these illustrate the point that merely having rights is not enough. If we are not vigilant in ensuring their non-violation and when necessary enforcing rights, then it is as if we do not have them at all. The same rights that protect Dow Jones' intellectual property also work to protect Briefing and its intellectual property---when the published content or ideas are actually theirs. Not only did Dow Jones protect its own rights, but in publicly enforcing them it sent a message to the world that violating copyright laws and misappropriating someone else's content is a serious offense that our legal system takes seriously. To bring this point home, as sole in-house counsel I make sure to remind employees at my company to be careful when posting someone else's materials or ideas online to credit the original creator/author, and when appropriate get permission before using or posting it.