Bertelsmann Settles Lawsuit With NMPA

Probably a big sigh of relief is going through the headquarters of Germany’s largest media group Bertelsmann since they were able to settle the Napster case’s lawsuit with the National Music Publishers Association as the Financial Times, Wired and others have reported this weekend.

Bertelsmann agreed to pay 95 million Euro to settle the final copyright claims after a five years dispute. According to the FT overall the Napster litigation has been settled for a total of about 300 million Euro after previously coming to individual agreements with Universal Music, Warner Music and EMI.

Bertelsmann’s involvement with Napster started in 2002, two years after the original court case has been filed. Shortly afterwards Napster shut down and was started off fresh by Roxio as a legal download service for music. Copyright holders went after Bertelsmann then, claiming they wanted “to preserve Napster’s user base for Bertelsmann’s own commercial advantage.”

(This article originally was written for blognation Germany. Since blognation is gone I have reposted it here)