Apr 21, 2010
Sued for copying stories
<!-- by line --> <!-- end by line --> NEW YORK - DOW Jones & Co sued the financial news service Briefing.com Inc on Tuesday, accusing it of getting a 'free ride' by systematically misappropriating news and headlines for its website, often in near real-time. The lawsuit, filed in Manhattan federal court comes one month after another judge in the same courthouse issued an injunction banning Theflyonthewall.com from quickly publishing research from Bank of America Corp's Merrill Lynch unit, Barclays and Morgan Stanley.
'Briefing.com has brazenly taken a free ride,' Dow Jones general counsel Mark Jackson said in a statement. 'Briefing.com did not use its own resources to uncover, verify and describe news events. It waited for Dow Jones to do all the work, and then simply copied the content.' Dow Jones, a unit of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, is seeking a permanent injunction against copyright infringement, the deletion of copyrighted materials from Briefing.com's database, compensatory and punitive damages.
Briefing.com, based in Chicago, did not return requests for comment. The copyright lawsuit is the latest battle among financial news providers over the alleged misappropriation of 'hot news' and whether it infringes copyright law or the media's ability to publish under the First Amendment. Such information, whether in the form of breaking news or analyst research, regularly causes stocks to move. Murdoch has championed paid-for online news, saying Google has cost the industry revenue by making news available for free.
According to its website, Briefing.com offers some services for free and others for US$40 a month (S$55) or more. Founder and chairman Dick Green created Briefing.com in 1992 and the company employs more than 60 people, the website says. -- REUTERS
<!-- story content : end -->
