Infopaq International A/S v. Danske Dagblades Forening

Infopaq International A/S (Infopaq) (plaintiff) operated a media-monitoring service that emailed summaries of articles from Danish newspapers to subscribers. To create each summary, Infopaq employed a multipart process that included manually scanning the newspaper, saving data as a digital text file, creating an 11-word extract centered around a search term, and printing the extract. Danske Dagblades Forening (DDF) (defendant), an association representing the copyright interests of Danish newspaper publishers, took the position that Infopaq’s process required the consent of the publishers. Infopaq brought an action in regional court in an attempt to assert that no such consent was needed. The court dismissed the claim. Infopaq appealed to the Danish supreme court, which referred the matter to the European Union (EU) Court of Justice for a preliminary ruling. Under EU law, a limited exception existed for reproduction of copyrighted works if the act of reproduction was temporary, among other requirements. In a separate ruling involving Infopaq, the EU Court of Justice found that Infopaq’s printing of the 11-word extracts did not qualify as temporary and thus fell outside of the permitted exception. However, DDF continued to seek a preliminary ruling to clarify other aspects of Infopaq’s process in relation to the exception.