Gawker ruling shows News Corp means business on copyright

HarperCollins' legal victory against US gossip site Gawker over the unauthorised publication of extracts from Sarah Palin's latest book is the second copyright victory for Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation in a matter of days. The book publisher that is part of Murdoch's media empire said it has secured an agreement with Gawker, the US gossip site, not to publish excerpts from Sarah Palin's latest book American By Heart. Gawker ran lengthy extracts from the title, which is published by HarperCollins, last week. The two sides settled out of court after HarperCollins filed a lawsuit alleging copyright infringement on Friday. Separately, Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones, which News Corp bought in 2007, has won a court battle with Briefing.com, an online news service which it claimed copied newswire stories without permission. Although unrelated, the cases provide further evidence of Murdoch's determination to use the courts to protect the company's intellectual property . Briefing.com agreed to pay an unspecified sum to Dow Jones according to Reuters, after it admitted infringing copyright. Dow Jones called the payment "substantial". Murdoch signalled his intention to fiercely defend News Corp content last year when he accused Google of stealing for carrying snippets of content from newspaper websites without paying for it. Other Murdoch executives, including Wall Street Journal managing editor Robert Thomson, have described the search giant as a "parasite" . An uneasy truce has since prevailed between Google and News Corp, but there has been speculation that Murdoch might ultimately strike a deal with Microsoft's search engine Bing that would lead to its content being removed from Google. The abundance of free content available online is a challenge for News Corp at a time when it is pushing ahead with charging for access to its newspaper websites. In the UK, digital content from the Times, Sunday Times and the News of the World is now available only to subscribers. The Sun is expected to follow suit. Last month, James Murdoch, chief executive of News Corp in Europe and Asia, said in a speech that publishers needed to "find new ways of managing copyright that go with the grain of technology". In the US, News Corp is to launch a newspaper for the iPad called the Daily, which is expected to be aimed at a young, metropolitan audience. Sources familiar with the company's thinking said that it will appear in the first quarter of 2011. • To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email [email protected] or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. • If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication".