Meltwater obtains right to appeal dangerous High Court ruling

London -26 November 2010: Meltwater has obtained permission to appeal the disappointing first instance High Court judgment of 26^th November 2010 as we strongly believe it reaches a wrong interpretation of the law. This decision is anyway only an interlude towards the Copyright Tribunal decision which will rule on the reasonableness of the NLA's licensing terms for online content which has been at the very core of Meltwater’s case against NLA from the beginning.

Meltwater has challenged the NLA licensing scheme on two main accounts. Firstly we do not agree that our clients are required to sign a licensing agreement to receive email reports containing links to the online news article. Secondly, Meltwater has challenged the aggressive fee structure and the terms demanded from our clients. Meltwater and its legal team stand firmly behind these objections.

The first instance High Court ruling undermines the basic principles of the operation and use of the Internet.

First, it means that simply the browsing of copyright protected content made freely available on the Internet will infringe copyright if it is read without a rightholder licence. We believe that browsing content made available on the Internet should not infringe copyright.

Secondly, simply using headlines of an article for bibliographic reference could infringe copyright.

These are general principles that need to be addressed by the courts. In any event, Meltwater still looks forward to the Copyright Tribunal's ruling on Meltwater's case against the reasonableness of the NLA's licensing scheme.