Yahoo announced today that it has paid undisclosed damages and costs to a Singaporean media company after reaching an amicable settlement in a copyright infringement suit.
The American tech company acknowledged that its Yahoo Singapore news site reproduced content from Singapore Press Holdings without approval. In a joint statement issued with SPH, Yahoo said that it “deeply regretted” the actions of a few Yahoo employees in Asia-Pacific, and that those employees have been terminated or disciplined.
Yahoo has also undertaken not to “knowingly or intentionally infringe SPH’s copyrights”, while emphasizing that as publishers, it will “strive to respect the intellectual property rights of others” in areas that they conduct business in.
SPH filed a lawsuit against Yahoo in November 2011 at Singapore’s High Court, citing 23 articles from its newspapers that it claimed Yahoo substantially reproduced over a 12-month duration. In August last year, SPH upped this figure to 254 articles, after including a time period all the way back to July 2010.
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An SPH article says the lawsuit, which saw a largely-traditional media company stand off against a new media firm, was believed to be the first such case of its kind in Singapore.
Headline image via Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
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