International News Service vs. Associated Press Case Brief

International News Service v. Associated Press

Supreme Court of the United States, 1918

FACTS

AP (plaintiff) and INS (defendant) are competitors in the collection and dissemination of the news. When AP publishes its news, since it's not property it goes into the public domain. INS admits to taking news that has already been disseminated in a variety of ways: from AP papers themselves and public bulletin boards these papers use to get information.

They then incorporate the information that they find into their own publications for profit.

HOLDING:

"Quasi-property rights" may be invoked to protect against unfair competition by competitors, even when the commodity in question is not "owned" by anyone (like the news). More specifically, when the news has commercial value, it becomes "quasi-property." according to AudioCaseFiles.

ISSUE:

Whether defendant may lawfully be restrained from appropriating news taken from bulletins issued by complainant or any of its members, or from newspapers published by them, for the purpose of selling it to defendant's clients.

(1) Whether there is any property in news

(2) Whether, if there be property in news collected for the purpose of being published, it survives the instant of its publication in the first newspaper to which it is communicated by the news-gatherer;

(3) whether defendant's admitted course of conduct in appropriating for commercial use matter taken from bulletins or early editions of Associated Press publications constitutes unfair competition in trade.

Case must turn upon the question of unfair competition in business.

REASONING:

The peculiar value of news is in the spreading of it while it is fresh; and it is evident that a valuable property interest in the news, as news, cannot be maintained by keeping it secret.

The parties are competitors in this field; and, on fundamental principles, applicable here as elsewhere, when the rights or privileges of the one are liable to conflict with those of the other, each party is under a duty so to conduct its own business as not unnecessarily or unfairly to injure that of the other.