Since Ransquawk doesn’t engage in much newsgathering, they take content from news organizations like ours in order to produce their squawks and headlines. They’re systematically copying, pasting, and selling our journalists’ work. They don’t have permission to do this, but from their response to our cease and desist letter, they don’t seem to care.

Dow Jones cited the sometimes controversial “hot news misappropriation” doctrine, which argues that news providers should have a limited ability to stop others from freeriding off their breaking news work.

Well, it worked:

Dow Jones & Co on Tuesday won a $5 million (3.11 million pounds) judgmeent against the London-based service Ransquawk, which it accused of pirating its content by broadcasting news within seconds of publication to traders and other subscribers.

But whether that money will be collected is still an open matter:

It was unclear whether Ransquawk has any U.S. assets or operations that would allow the judgement to be enforced. Ransquawk has not contested the lawsuit since it was filed in January.

“As a company domiciled in the United Kingdom that has not entered into litigation in the United States, we do not fall under the jurisdiction of the U.S. courts,” Ranvir Singh, Ransquawk’s chief executive, said in a statement. “Furthermore, as ‘hot news misappropriation’ is not a law recognised in the United Kingdom, we remain confident that any judgments entered against us in New York will not be enforceable in the United Kingdom.”