LA Times v. Free Republic

On September 28, 1998, the Los Angeles Times sued the Free Republic website for copyright infringement in federal court in California. Users of Free Republic, a conservative internet forum founded and operated by James Robinson, frequently posted copies of articles of interest for discussion on the site. According to the complaint, articles from the Times and the Washington Post were copied verbatim and in their entirety.

Free Republic asserted that the copies constituted fair use under copyright law and were a mode of free speech under the First Amendment, and moved for summary judgment on those grounds on October 19, 1999. The Times filed a cross-motion for partial summary judgment on the question of infringement. The court denied Free Republic's motion and granted the Times' motion, ruling that the fair use doctrine's factors weighed in favor of the Times and that enforcing the plaintiffs' copyright claims did not impermissably restrict the speech of Free Republic users.

On November 16, 2000, the court entered final judgment in favor of the Times, and ordered Free Republic to remove all of the plaintiffs' copyrighted material from its website and injoined Free Republic from posting any new copyrighted material in the future. (The court did note that Free Republic could post copyrighted material if it met the requirements of the fair use doctrine.) The court also awarded the Times $1 million in statutory damages from Robinson and Free Republic. Electronic Orchard, an Internet programming and design company owned by Robinson, was not found liable for damages.

Free Republic appealed the decision to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. While on appeal, the parties agreed on a modified version of the district court's judgment and settled the case. The modified judgment still retained the injunction but reduced the damage award from $1 million to $5,000 to the Times and $5,000 to the Post. The Court of Appeals remanded the case back to the trial court for the purposes of entering the modified judgment.