• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, August 31, 2009

Last year, when GateHouse Media sued Boston.com for linking to GateHouse stories and posting the headlines and lead sentences, it looked as if the courts might shed some new light on fair use in the Internet age. But the companies settled their differences before the case ever got far enough for a ruling on the key issue.

Now, however, the same issue appears to be at the heart of a brewing dispute in Connecticut, where the Journal Inquirer newspaper has just published an article accusing the Hartford Courant of "misappropriating" news stories from a host of other state newspapers.

In some instances, the Courant apparently credited the other papers, but not in others. The Journal Inquirer took the Courant to task for both situations: "Either way, editors say, the Courant is using for free and making money from a product other papers pay to produce, and they want it to stop," the Journal Inquirer wrote.

Jeffrey Levine, the Courant's director of content, admitted that the company made some mistakes when it ran some Web articles in the print version of the paper. "We found that we inappropriately dropped the attribution or proper credit and in some cases credited ourselves with a byline to a Courant reporter," he said.

Levine didn't explain exactly how this mistake could have occurred. It's worth noting that copyright infringement can result in astronomical damages awards -- even where the infringement isn't "willful."

Levine also said the Courant is reviewing its aggregation strategy "to make sure that it meets our standards and recognizes the work of other news organizations." That might not be enough to placate other newspapers if the Journal Inquirer is correct that publishers throughout the state are upset about the "misappropriation" of their content even when they're credited.