Three Brokerages Sue theflyonthewall.com AP Brokerages Sue Web Site Over Reports Monday June 26, 4:48 pm ET 3 Brokerages File Lawsuit Vs. Web Site for Posting Research Reports http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/060626/analysts_research_suit.html?.v=1 NEW YORK (AP) -- Three brokerage firms sued theflyonthewall.com in federal court in Manhattan on Monday, alleging the Web site misappropriated and infringed on the copyrights of their proprietary equity research reports. In their copyright lawsuit, the brokerage units of Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and Merrill Lynch & Co. claims the New Jersey-based Web site has republished their "confidential, time-sensitive equity research" verbatim often within minutes of its release to clients, citing more than a dozen reports from February 2005 as examples. The complaint also alleges the Web site, which charges a monthly or annual fee, has since modified its practice or reproducing significant portions of the research reports word-for-word at the firms' request. However, theflyonthewall.com continues to infringe on the copyrighted reports by "posting, in summarized and slightly reworded form, the substantive core of the firms' equity research," the lawsuit claims. It gives four reports from June, July and August of last year as examples. A representative for the Web site declined comment Monday, saying they weren't aware of the lawsuit. The complaint asks for $150,000 in damages per research report infringed upon and a permanent injunction against republishing the firms' research reports or airing audio reports about that research until the reports are no longer newsworthy.
Proprietary equity research reports at best are random calls and at worst are contrarian indicators. The readers must sue them for posting those.