International News Service v. Associated Press

Associated Press (AP) (plaintiff), serving 900 newspapers on a $3.5 million budget, sued its chief rival International News Service (INS) (defendant), which served 400 newspapers on a $2 million budget, alleging INS bribed AP's members to feed it AP news, induced AP employees to leak news before publication in violation of company rules, and copied news straight off AP's bulletin boards and early editions to resell to INS's own customers. At trial, AP showed INS exploited the time-zone gap using telephone and telegraph technology to take East Coast AP bulletin-board news and sell it as INS's own to West Coast customers. The trial court enjoined INS's first two practices (bribery and inducement) but declined to enjoin the bulletin-board and early-edition copying; the appellate court upheld the injunction and extended it to cover that third practice too.