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The Newspaper Licensing Agency has won its High Court battle against Meltwater and the Public Relations Consultants Association (PRCA) for the right to license online newspaper content.

The NLA had argued that online newspaper content is protected by copyright law, and that media monitoring companies should pay licence fees if they wished to reproduce any articles.

David Pugh, managing director at the NLA, said: 'We welcome today's ruling from the High Court and are pleased that the Court recognises that newspaper publishers' web content is protected by copyright law. We hope this ruling will help ensure a fair share of web monitoring revenue for publishers and a fair media monitoring market.'

About 31 per cent of newspaper content is unique to the web, according to the NLA, and publishers spend millions of pounds on their websites to differentiate themselves from the competition.

It estimates that the total UK market for online news monitoring is worth about £10 million, and argued that, as newspapers' content was central to that market, publishers should receive a fair share of revenues from paid-for monitoring.

The NLA initially introduced online news licences from 1 January for both aggregators and end-users, but deferred levying charges after news aggregator Meltwater referred the scheme to the Copyright Tribunal.

The NLA had then sought a ruling from the High Court on whether users of paid-for aggregator services could receive, copy and distribute newspaper web content without a licence.

The Copyright Tribunal will meet to review the commercial terms for both end-user and aggregator licences in February. Pugh added: 'Now we have legal clarity, we look forward to the Copyright Tribunal decisions on the commercial aspects of web licensing. The NLA would like to see as swift and complete a resolution as possible for all parties - publishers, media monitoring companies and their clients. Like the NLA, the 22 licensed monitoring companies want clarity to develop their businesses.' 

Meltwater plans to appeal the decision.

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