Law note · United States (federal only)
Associated Press v. Meltwater U.S. Holdings, Inc.
cite 931 F. Supp. 2d 537 (S.D.N.Y. 2013)
stage IN FORCE in force since 2013-03-21
Judge Denise Cote held that Meltwater's commercial news-monitoring service, which crawled publisher websites and delivered headlines, ledes, and excerpts to paid enterprise subscribers, was not protected by fair use. Unlike a search engine, Meltwater did not transform the content but directly substituted for AP's licensed syndication feed, failing three of the four fair-use factors.
The decision is the leading case establishing that commercial snippet aggregation targeting the news-licensing market is copyright infringement.
Primary source: Justia district court
decision date confirmed from copyright.gov summary