Court Allows AP To Assert Intellectual Property Right Over Facts

AP was denied the right to pursue cases based on trade mark infringement and unfair competition.

Intellectual property law expert Kim Walker of Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind OUT-LAW.COM, said that the case would not succeed here, since UK law has no equivalent to the hot news doctrine.

"Assuming that they are not actually copying text, there would be nothing to protect AP here," he said. "The law of confidence would protect them while information remained confidential, as long as the people revealing the information could be reasonably expected to know it was confidential and that its release would be likely to cause damage."

"But that only applies while the information is confidential. Once it is published and out there, there is no buffer period during which the law of confidentiality would protect the owner of information," he said.

The Court also dealt with the issue of jurisdiction. AHN is based in Florida, AP in New York, and each argued that their own state law applied to the case. The Court said that previous cases of misappropriation had established that the law to be applied was the law of the place “where the plaintiff suffered the injury sued upon". It said that New York law applied to the case.