The PR industry is celebrating the NLA’s “climb down” last week over its web licensing scheme. The move followed Meltwater’s challenge of the scheme via the UK Copyright Tribunal.

The NLA said last week that it was suspending invoicing until the Copyright Tribunal reports its findings. In its submission Meltwater has asked the Tribunal to refund any fees if its claim proved successful.

“We’re delighted that the NLA has decided to suspend invoicing for its ill-considered new web licence pending the outcome of a Copyright Tribunal brought about by Meltwater,” said Kevin Taylor, Past President, CIPR in a statement.

But celebrations could be premature as the PRCA’s director general Francis Ingham recognises.

“[…] The NLA say they’ll retrospectively bill users if the Tribunal happens to rule in their favour. I think they’ll lose the case, but even if they were to win, I am extremely doubtful they would find it easy to back-date bills – I know they’d like to be a wing of the Revenue, but they’re not.”

Steve Earl has waded through Meltwater’s 30-page submission to the Copyright Tribunal. He studied media law and has considered the arguments in a post on his blog. It’s well worth a read.

He believes that the Meltwater claim rests on three points:

• the information that Meltwater provides to its customers is “a necessary step in the act of receiving a literary work”
• Meltwater “signposts” news that breaks online. Any copyright obligations are between the publisher and the end-user
• URLs are not intellectual property and cannot be considered part of a copyrighted literary work

Meltwater has asked the Copyright Tribunal to rule that end-users who receive its aggregated lists of breaking online news stories are not breaking copyright law in any way.

In a comment on this blog last week Durrant’s managing director Jeremy Thompson said:

“Meltwater are challenging the NLA’s right to licence hyperlinking which they believe is against the spirit of the internet. They tried something similar in Scandinavia and failed.”

The Copyright Tribunal could take up to 12 months to adjudicate on the case. In the meantime the PR industry is celebrating last week’s announcement by the NLA as an early victory.

Francis Ingham has the last word.

“The fundamental point is this though. If they were confident of their position, they wouldn’t have blinked. But they have. And in our view, it’s because their bluff’s been called,” he said.