The Hartford Courant, which provoked a lawsuit over an ill-fated aggregation experiment, quietly settled the case last week. The settlement is a vindication for the small newspaper that sued, but the outcome also means that media outlets will not get a further chance to test-drive the controversial “hot news” doctrine…

In the past couple years, media companies doing battle with news aggregators—or competitors—began to turn to the little-known legal doctrine of “hot news.” It stems from a 1918 Supreme Court case that found news organizations might have a “quasi-property” right in news they worked hard to report, even if the…

Updated with response from TheWrap editor-in-chief Sharon Waxman. A year ago, Sharon Waxman, editor-in-chief of TheWrap.com, sent a letter to the CEO of Newser accusing him of not playing fair in the digital news environment, by copying the meat of TheWrap’s stories without giving appropriate credit. Now, Waxman is on…

Briefing.com has settled a lawsuit brought against it by Dow Jones (NSDQ: NWS) & Company, paying an undisclosed sum of money for publishing Dow Jones stories without its consent. But perhaps more intriguing than Dow Jones’ victory in this open-and-shut copyright case is Briefing.com’s admission that it also broke “hot…

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…