The UK Court of Appeal yesterday backed a High Court decision made in November 2010, which found that copyright subsisted in both headlines and extracts from various articles reproduced by the media monitoring company Meltwater.

The High Court case was brought by Newspaper Licensing Agency (NLA) against Meltwater News and Public Relations Consultants Association Limited (PRCA). However the appeal was brought solely by the PRCA, which argued that the original decision effectively required end users of media monitoring services such as Meltwater to get two licences for one act of copying.

The Court of Appeal rejected the PRCA’s argument with the following statement from the Chancellor, Sir Andrew Morritt: “In my view, the receipt and use by an end-user of Meltwater News will constitute an infringement of the copyright of the Publishers in either or both the headlines or the articles on their websites…It follows that…the end-user will for that reason alone require a [licence] to avoid such liability. That is the context in which PRCA’s submission must be considered.” [1]

To read the full text of the appeal decision, click on the link below:

[1] http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2011/890.html