In the case of this latest lawsuit, the publishers claim that all three companies may have licensed the copyrights on the recordings, but didnt license the copyright on the compositions.There are a whole lot of details out yet explaining the legalities and issues at hand in the case, but it is assumedthese music services struck deals with record labels, but somehow the publishers and labels are separate entities and the rights are separate.

In many cases we assume that the publishing rights were also covered by the major record labels. But in some cases the publishing rights were owned by independent companies, and the claim looks to be that the publishing rights were never cleared with them.

What this means is that Microsoft, Yahoo and Real were all streaming music that they only had partial rights too. And since the publishers consider each instance a song is played to be an infringement yikes! They could be looking at some pretty hefty fines if the court agrees.

If youre interested in reading the entire court filing, which I will warn you is a massive 104 pages long, here you go. Have at it. In the meantime, well definitely be following this closely. Any ruling in favor of the music publishers could potentially have major ramifications for all three companies. I imagine that Google right now is pretty darn happy that theyve stayed out the music game, and that their search engine competitors are being tested.

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