NLA goes to High Court in row with aggregator Meltwater

The Newspaper Licensing Agency (NLA) has started a High Court action against online aggregator Meltwater as part of an ongoing dispute over new licences from the agency.

The new licences, introduced in January, include a new agreement for paid-for services from aggregators and their clients, such as media monitoring services for businesses, that make use of web content from newspapers who are NLA members.

Under the new structure commercial agencies, including aggregators, must pay between £5,000 and £10,000 per year to crawl online newspapers, while clients of these services would pay from £50 a year, depending on headcount and user base, according to an Econsultancy interview with NLA commercial director Andrew Hughes.

More than 22 aggregators and 280 companies in total have agreed to the new licences, according to the NLA, but Meltwater has refused. Instead the aggregator, supported by the Public Relations Consultants Association (PRCA), has referred the NLA's licences to the Copyright Tribunal.

In a statement released today, the NLA says it is seeking a High Court ruling, but not compensation from Meltwater or the PRCA, to create "legal clarity" in the case before the tribunal and to speed up a resolution to the dispute. The Copyright Tribunal can only rule on the commercial and not the legal aspects of the NLA's licensing for aggregators, it says.

"In its ruling of February 25, the Copyright Tribunal raised questions as to whether it was able to rule on some of the substantive points of law raised in Meltwater’s submission, specifically whether end-user licensing per se is required. (…) It is therefore uncertain whether: the Copyright Tribunal has jurisdiction over aspects of the Meltwater references; and if not, whether it can refer the issue to the High Court itself," says the NLA release.

"The NLA has asked the High Court to rule on: whether aggregators require a licence to copy content and distribute it as part of a paid-for media monitoring service; whether end users (such as PR agencies) require a licence to receive that content and use it for commercial purposes."

If the High Court were to rule that such a license was necessary for aggregators and Meltwater still refused to take a licence after such a ruling, the NLA would seek an injunction.

“Meltwater’s position is that end users do not need a licence to simply receive links and read articles on the NLA’s members’ websites, and we welcome the NLA’s reasonable and proportionate response to the issue now being before the Copyright Tribunal,” said Jørn Lyseggen, CEO Meltwater Group, in a statement to Journalism.co.uk in January.

Online aggregator NewsNow has also refused to sign up to the NLA's new aggregator licence for paid-for services, but has since dropped links to NLA members' content from its subscription service. Some member newspapers have taken action on their own by blocking NewsNow and Meltwater from crawling their websites.

Shortly after launching the new licences, the NLA announced it would suspend invoicing of aggregators and other sites who have signed up for the new aggregator licence until the results of a copyright tribunal. If the tribunal finds in favour of the NLA, the agency will backdate payments to 1 January 2010.

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