News Pirating

"The value of the service, and of the news furnished, depends upon the promptness of transmission, as well as upon the accuracy and impartiality of the news; it being essential that the news be transmitted to members or subscribers as early or earlier than similar information can be furnished to competing newspapers by other news services, and that the news furnished by each agency shall not be furnished to newspapers which do not contribute to the expense of gathering it. The bill was filed to restrain the pirating of complainant’s news by defendant in three ways: First, by bribing employes of newspapers published by complainant’s members to furnish Associated Press news to defendant before publication, for transmission by telegraph and telephone to defendant’s clients for publication by them; second, by inducing Associated Press members to violate its by-laws and permit defendant to obtain news before publication; and, third, by copying news from bulletin boards and from early editions of complainant’s newspapers and selling this, either bodily or after rewriting it, to defendant’s customers. The District Court granted a preliminary injunction under the first and second heads, but refused at that stage to restrain the systematic practice admittedly pursued by defendant, of taking news bodily from the bulletin boards and early editions of complainant’s newspapers and selling it as its own. The Circuit Court of Appeals sustained the injunction order so far as it went, and upon complainant’s appeal modified it and remanded the cause, with directions to issue an injunction also against any bodily taking of the words or substance of complainant’s news until its commercial value as news had passed away."