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Anyone who clicks on a link and reads an article on an aggregator or media monitoring website in a commercial setting may infringe copyright unless licensed by the publisher, according to a UK Court of Appeal Judgement dated 27 July 2011 in the NLA v PRCA/ Meltwater case.

In 2009, the Newspaper Licensing Agency (NLA), representing most UK newspapers, introduced a compulsory licensing regime for aggregators and media monitoring firms that use content from its members’ websites (newspapers).

Meltwater, a company providing online media monitoring services, agreed to purchase a licence for itself as a monitoring company under this new regime, but did not agree that its customers (PR Agencies) should have a licence too in order to use Meltwater’s services.

The Meltwater News Service consists of Meltwater sending its customers reports of articles, which include the headline of the article, the opening words of the article and an extract showing the context in which the chosen search term appears.

The Court of Appeal was asked to decide if members of the Public Relations Consultants Association (“PRCA”), a professional body that represents UK PR consultancies, in-house communications teams and PR freelancers, require a web end-user copyright licence in order to lawfully receive and/or use online media monitoring services from Meltwater.

The Court of Appeal ruled that the members of the PRCA, receiving these reports, need a copyright licence to ensure that they are not infringing copyright. The Court ruled that headlines are capable of being original literary works and that extracts containing opening words can be a substantial part of an original literary work. Moreover, the Court ruled that the technological process of displaying a webpage on a computer is not a “temporary copy” exempt from copyright.

This decision is likely to have an impact on all websites that provide a news aggregator or media monitoring service and could necessitate major changes in the business models of these websites.