At 8:45 a.m. on the last business day of the month, you can forward the Chicago Business Barometer to whomever you like. But if you hit "send" just three minutes early? See you in federal court.

That's the lesson that TradeTheNews.com is learning after it was hit by a complaint in federal court last Tuesday that alleges that the financial news site violated copyright law by republishing some unspecified portion of the financial activity report sometime between 8:42 and 8:43 a.m. Central time last May.

The plaintiff, Kingsbury International, surveys businesses nationally in order to compile monthly statistics of national economic activity. It releases the report to the general public at 8:45 a.m. on the last day of every month. But private subscribers can get the report at 8:42 a.m., under the condition they do not then redistribute it for another 180 seconds.

Presumably, the breakdown of sales, inventory and order backlogs – all a part of the report's namesake barometer of the economy – would give traders just enough knowledge to place quick and informed bets in the market before others get the same info.

But in May 2007, Trade The News – a subscriber to Kingsbury's service – intentionally broke the three-minute embargo by nearly instantly republishing some of the report to the Wall Street traders that subscribe to TTN's online investment news service, according to the allegations in the complaint (.pdf).

And now Kingsbury wants Chicago federal court judge to find that TTN violated the copyright law's prohibition on unauthorized distribution. The company seeks unspecified damages for economic loss, as well as a fine to make an example of TTN.

If Trade The News actually did simply instantly forward on the entire report to its subscribers, the case would likely be a pretty clear copyright infringement story, with a twist about the value of information's timing in the internet age.

But suppose instead of republishing the charts and graphs and sub-categories of information, TTN simply reported that the Chicago Business Barometer rose in May to 64.7 from 57.5 in April?

Can you prohibit distribution of a fact via copyright?

What if TTN printed the graphs with the facts, but didn't publish any of the commentary?

Can you prohibit distribution of a graph via copyright? Or is a graph just a set of facts in a box?

TTN did not immediately return a message seeking comment.

Via Courthouse News