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| Edited By: Jonathan Stempel |Source: Reuters |Updated: Mar 17, 2018, 04:27 AM IST
A Manhattan federal judge on Wednesday threw out Viacom Inc's $1 billion lawsuit accusing Google Inc of posting copyrighted videos on its YouTube service without permission.
Viacom claimed that "tens of thousands of videos on YouTube, resulting in hundreds of millions of views," had been posted based on its copyrighted works, and that the defendants knew about the illegal uploads but did nothing to stop them.
Google and YouTube, in contrast, argued that they were entitled to "safe harbour" protection under federal copyright law because they had insufficient notice of the particular alleged infringements.
In a 30-page ruling, US district judge Louis Stanton said the defendants were entitled to safe harbour protection "against all of the plaintiff's claims for direct and secondary copyright infringement."
He directed the parties to submit a report by July 14 to address any remaining issues in the case.
Viacom and Google were not immediately available for comment.
The cases are Viacom International Inc et al versus YouTube Inc et al, US district court, southern district of New York, number 07-02103; and The Football Association Premier League Ltd et al versus YouTube Inc et al in the same court, number 07-03582.
