Europeans may browse the Internet without fear of infringing copyrights, as the EU Court of Justice ruled Thursday in a decision that ends a four-year legal battle threatening the open Internet.

It was the European top court's second wide-ranging cyber ruling in less than a month. The court ruled May 13 that Europeans had a so-called "right to be forgotten" requiring Google to delete "inadequate" and "irrelevant" data upon requests from the public. That decision is spurring thousands of removal requests.

In this week's case, the court slapped down the Newspaper Licensing Agency's (NLA) claim that the technological underpinnings of Web surfing amounted to infringement.

The court ruled that "on-screen copies and the cached copies made by an end-user in the course of viewing a website satisfy the conditions" of infringement exemptions spelled out in the EU Copyright Directive. The NLA's opponent in the case was the Public Relations Consultants Association (PRCA). The PR group hailed the decision.

"We are utterly delighted that the CJEU has accepted all of our arguments against the NLA, which represents eight national newspapers. The Court of Justice, like the Supreme Court before them, understands that the NLA's attempts to charge for reading online content do not just affect the PR world, but the fundamental rights of all EU citizens to browse the Internet," PRCA Director General Francis Ingham said. "This is a huge step in the right direction for the courts as they seek ways to deal with the thorny issues of Internet use and copyright law."

The NLA is the body that distributes reproductions of newspaper content, including the Guardian's. Its main argument was the cost that the licensing public relations companies pay for the reproductions should factor in to what is temporarily copied on a reader's computer.

David Pugh, the NLA's managing director, said opponents were making the case out to be as if the sky was falling, but it's not, he said. Pugh believed the issue was much narrower than portrayed.

"In our view, [the temporary copying] exception is designed to protect ISPs and telecoms companies when they're transmitting data from A to B in networks. The PR spin put on this case was that if our ruling was allowed to stand then users of the Internet would be criminalized for using a browser, but that's never been what it's about," he said.

Regardless, the case absolutely posed a fundamental question about Web surfing and infringement.

"Despite the ruling, one cannot overstate how irrational this case was to begin with. It’s hard to believe the question at stake was whether browsing the Internet is legal or not," said Jakob Kucharczyk, the Brussels director for the Computer & Communications Industry Association. "Even though the court has provided a clear answer to that question, one must wonder whether our copyright regime is apt for the digital era."