By Cristina Luiggi
The Associated Press filed a lawsuit against All Headline News Corp. (AHN) in February accusing them of copying and rewriting AP articles and selling them to other news outlets, according to the AP.
What has generated attention is not the charge of copyright infringement, but the court’s acceptance of AP’s claim of “hot news” misappropriation.
According to the court’s memorandum, the AP is resting on a 1918 U.S. Supreme Court decision, dubbed the “hot news” doctrine, which found that, because the AP had spent time, effort, and money gathering the news, it should be protected from “free-loading” competitors.
That is, other news organizations taking their news and profiting from it. This gave the AP a quasi-property right – separate from copyright – on its time-sensitive breaking news.
An article published by the Wiley Rein LLP firm, said that "this is the first time that a court has applied the "hot news" doctrine to content on the Internet."
Questions: Because the time-sensitivity of the news qualifies it as "hot news", how can the court define what constitutes as breaking news in the Internet? In other words, for how long after a breaking news story is published online is it protected by the "hot news" doctrine? Can bloggers that are re-reporting on recently published AP stories be held accountable under this doctrine?
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