Viacom Inc. (VIA-NYSE) announced this morning that it has sued YouTube and Google (GOOG) for "massive intentional copyright infringement" of Viacom’s entertainment properties. The suit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, seeks more than $1 billion in damages, In addition to the $1 Bilion Viacoms is seeking an injunction prohibiting Google and YouTube from further copyright infringement.
The complaint contends that almost 160,000 unauthorized clips of Viacom’s programming have been available on YouTube and that these clips had been viewed more than 1.5 billion times. While others have threatened the company and have sent warnings this may be the biggest suit of its kind. Last year Google set aside some $200 million for lawsuits against the company after the YouTube acquisition. If Viacom is doing this, then logic might dictate that CBS (CBS-NYSE) would not be too far behind because of the old ties with the companies.
Google (GOOG) has become somewhat used to suits and threats of suits against the company over numerous "opening up" of copyright issues at both the old-Google and the new Google post-YouTube and it has already made some basic disclosures on copyright suits in Filings, so even with the size of the suit this may not be the world’s largest surprise of the day. GOOG shares are down less than 1% at $461.50 in pre-market activity.
Jon C. Ogg
March 13, 2007
Jon Ogg can be reached at [email protected]; he does not own securities in the companies he covers.
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