Can Financial Firms Use Hot News Doctrine to Stifle Aggregators?
Traditional print newspapers and magazines are experiencing upheaval thanks to the rise of the Internet, but they are not the only information providers facing serious challenges. Even before the tumult created by the recent recession, major financial firms were struggling with the effects of competition from online financial news aggregation services aimed at investors. In some cases, these online services have obtained and disseminated the firms’ most closely held, time-sensitive and valuable information product: The daily stock recommendations generated by their financial analysts. The battles fought by several of those firms (Barclays Capital, Mogan Stanley and Merrill Lynch) are detailed in the recent federal district court ruling in Barclays Capital, Inc., v. Theflyonthewall.com (S.D.N.Y. Mar. 18, 2010). The firms won a big victory when federal judge Denise Cote, relying on the “hot news” misappropriation doctrine recognized under New York state law, issued an order limiting the
