The Associated Press and AHN Media have agreed to settle an intellectual property lawsuit filed by the wire service in early 2008. In the settlement, announced in a joint statement, AHN agrees to pay an “undisclosed” sum, admits to some improper use of AP content and—the part that may wind up helping AP most—“acknowledge the tort of ‘hot news misappropriation’ has been upheld by other courts and was ruled applicable in this case.”

The agreement, which resulted in the case being dismissed June 15, gives AP the chance to claim a win, even if it doesn’t add anything legally to the “hot news” argument it uses to argue its rights.

The notion of treating breaking news or “hot news” differently in terms of intellectual property dates back to a 1918 U.S. Supreme Court decision in AP’s favor when Hearst’s International News Service picked up and rewrote its WWI news. The court held that “hot news” was the “quasi property” of a news-gathering organization and that allowing another news agency to profit from that work “would render publication profitless, or so little profitable as in effect to cut off the service by rendering the cost prohibitive in comparison with the return.”

The settlement follows a February ruling by U.S. District Judge Kevin Castel that dismissed two counts of AP’s complaint but left the “hot news” idea on the table. AHN wanted the case argued in Florida state court, where it said the “hot news” idea had been rejected in favor of federal copyright law; Castel kept the case in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and said he would hear AP’s “hot news” claim.

All Headline News had a deal in 2003 that allowed the use of limited AP content but AP said in its initial filing that the contract ended in 2005 because AHN was taking full stories while stripping out the byline. As the statement notes, AHN denied the “substantive” allegations but agrees now that “there were many instances in which AHN improperly used AP’s content without AP’s consent.”

• AP Sues AHN Media For Copyright Infringement
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