Dow Jones owed $5 million from Ransquawk

Wall Street Journal parent Dow Jones & Co. should be awarded the full $5 million it’s seeking from an audio news service called Ransquawk, which was found liable for instantaneously rebroadcasting news headlines without permission, reports Bill Donahue of Law360.com

Donahue writes, “The magistrate’s recommendation comes four months after a federal judge ruled the ‘squawker’ service had run afoul of the ‘hot news’ misappropriation doctrine by repeating Dow Jones’ headlines seconds after they were published.

“Notably, the case didn’t not invoke federal copyright law, just the common law doctrine, which publications have used for decades to stop ‘free riding’ on their journalism.

“Ruling that $3.75 million per month was a fair approximation of what Dow Jones would have charged for Ransquawk’s ‘flagrant distribution’ of the reporting to ‘thousands of paid subscribers,’ U.S. Magistrate Judge Gabriel W. Gorenstein said Dow Jones should be owed the full $5 million it was seeking.

“‘We accept Dow Jones’s methodology for calculating its fair licensing fee based on what it in fact charges similarly situated entities as Ransquawk to use the … content,’ the magistrate said.

“Theoretically, Ransquawk would be able to argue against the recommendations, but the company hasn’t taken part in the lawsuit so far. The ruling against it in May was a default judgment, and it didn’t file briefs ahead of Monday’s report. The company did not return a request for comment on Monday.”

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