PBS MediaShift takes a look at financial firms and the competition they face from online financial news aggregations services.
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.
Legal battles have been fought by these companies, and earlier this year Barclays, Merrill Lynch, and Morgan Stanley won a victory in the federal district court, resting on the “hot news” doctrine, that stops republication of the companies’ stock recommendations by flyonthewall.com.
This case about the hot news doctrine has now itself become “hot news.”