Fifth Circuit sides with news aggregator in copyright battle

The Fifth Circuit ruled Thursday that news aggregator NewsBreak did not violate copyright law by embedding articles from Emmerich Newspapers, a Mississippi-based publisher, siding with a lower court's outcome but rejecting its reasoning.

The panel, comparing NewsBreak to a switchboard operator, said Emmerich itself technically transmitted the content to users, even when it displayed inside NewsBreak's app. The judges also opened the door to treating some URLs as protected copyright management information, without saying which ones, leaving that determination to future litigation.

Emmerich's attorney called the ruling important for publishers; NewsBreak's parent company did not comment. The judges themselves acknowledged the practical fallout could be messy, noting future cases will need to sort out where the line actually is.

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