A notable and early occurrence of quasi-property being found by a
court under
American law was the case of
International News Service v. Associated Press. The
Associated Press sued
International News Service for taking the substance of AP
news stories, rewriting the articles, and publishing the stories in its own member
newspapers. This activity did not violate
copyright law because the original AP articles were not copyrighted, and also because the subsequent INS articles copied only the facts— using different language to report the story. Nonetheless, the Court recognized an interest in the news distributor of information they had researched and gathered. A traditional property right would have granted the AP a right to exclude others from the content of their news stories good for all time and against everyone. The court described this new right as
quasi-property because it only granted them the power to exclude their competitors for a limited amount of time from the substance of their articles. The
general public had free rein to distribute the subject matter of the news without restriction. Creation of the new right was justified as protecting the AP from the "unfair competition" of a party who was reproducing the information and attempting to
profit by distributing it faster than the creator. ==References==