Dow Jones to receive $3.4 million from Calpers

Dow Jones & Co. will receive $3.4 million to settle claims that Calpers, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, improperly republished its content, including full-text articles from The Wall Street Journal.

Dow Jones asserted a series of claims against Calpers arising from the pension fund’s unauthorized publication of numerous articles from The Journal, MarketWatch, Barron’s, and other Dow Jones publications.

As part of the settlement, Calpers will pay Dow Jones $2 million in cash, and will purchase an additional $1.4 million in products and services from Dow Jones over the next two years.

“Dow Jones’s incomparable journalists around the world work hard to keep our subscribers well-informed,” said Jason P. Conti, Dow Jones’s general counsel, in a statement. “We have a duty to protect the powerful value of our journalism.”

In the last year, Dow Jones has significantly expanded its content protection efforts, including the formation of a cross-department committee that has identified and analyzed several potential misuses.

“Dow Jones has a track record of aggressively pursuing those who pilfer our content for profit, and this settlement is the latest example of that effort,” Conti said. “We will continue to track down the digital thieves who systematically swipe our content – there is more to come.”