Never use headlines
without permission in Japan...
Japan's best-selling newspaper, the
Yomiuri Shimbun, was awarded
compensation from the small Internet firm
Digital Alliance Corp. that used its news
headlines without permission. The
Intellectual Property High Court, a special
branch court of the Tokyo High Court,
ordered the company to pay about 237,700 yen
(2,000 dollars) to the Yomiuri.
According to the court the use of news
headlines as text for links to the articles
was illegal.
The
Yomiuri filed the case with the Tokyo
District Court in December 2002. It lost the
case in March 2004 as the lower court ruled
that Internet users can read headlines for
free online and therefore should be able to
use the service freely.
-
October 10, 2005,
Headline links can be dangerous in Japan, CNet:
"U.S. courts, by design or default, have generally taken a laissez-faire
approach to the digital republication of printed works as long as it adheres
to longstanding brick-and-mortar copyright law."