International News Service v. Associated Press

International News Service v. Associated Press, 248 U.S. 215 (1918), also known as INS v. AP or simply the INS case, is a 1918 decision of the United States Supreme Court that enunciated the misappropriation doctrine of federal intellectual property common law: a "quasi-property right" may be created against others by one's investment of effort and money in an intangible thing, such as information or a design. The doctrine is highly controversial and criticized by many legal scholars, but it has its supporters.

The INS decision recognized the doctrine of U.S. copyright law that there is no copyright in facts, which the Supreme Court later greatly elaborated in the Feist case in 1991, but INS nonetheless extended the prior law of unfair competition to cover an additional type of interference with business expectations: "misappropriation" of the product of "sweat of the brow." The case was decided when a body of federal common law existed for business practices and torts, which the Supreme Court had power to declare or create, but two decades later, the Supreme Court abolished that body of substantive law and held that state law must govern the field henceforth. Accordingly, the INS case no longer has precedential force although state courts are free to follow its reasoning if they so choose.

Background

Two competing United States news services (INS and AP) were in the business of reporting in the U.S. on World War I. Their businesses hinged on getting fast and accurate reports published. After reporting that was perceived by the Allied Powers (Britain and France) as unduly favorable to the Central Powers (Germany and Austria) by William Randolph Hearst's INS, the Allies barred INS from using Allied telegraph lines to report news, which effectively shut down INS's war reporting.

To continue publishing news about the war, INS gained access to AP news by examination of AP news bulletin boards and early editions of newspapers affiliated with AP. INS members would rewrite the news and publish it as their own without attribution to AP. Although INS newspapers had to wait for AP to post news before they went to press, INS newspapers in the West had no such disadvantage relative to their AP counterparts. The AP brought an action seeking to enjoin INS from copying AP-gathered news.