Internet copyright rulings quashed

British citizens can browse the internet without fear of litigation, after the Supreme Court quashed a previous ruling that had exposed millions of people to claims of copyright infringement. The UK’s highest court ruled that when a person viewed a web page on their computer, the temporary copies made on screen and in the internet cache were exempt from copyright infringement.

The ruling, which lawyers expect to be applied across the EU, is part of a long-running dispute between the Newspaper Licensing Agency, which represents newspaper publishers, and a news aggregation service called Meltwater. The case is the latest example of how courts around the world are being asked to make big decisions about the future of copyright law during a period of substantial technological evolution. To the surprise of many, the High Court and the Court of Appeals previously ruled that the temporary copies made through the process of displaying a web page on a computer is a violation of UK copyright law if made without the explicit consent of the copyright owner. But in its latest judgment, the Supreme Court said the previous rulings were “unacceptable” and would have made “infringers of many millions of ordinary users of the internet across the EU who use browsers and search engines for private as well as commercial purposes.”