Viacom $1bn lawsuit revived - FT.com A US court has revived Viacom's landmark $1bn copyright infringement complaint against Google's YouTube subsidiary, throwing open a case that has long symbolised the distrust and resentment felt by parts of the media industry towards the search company. The federal appeals court ruling, issued on Thursday, overturned a district court judge's decision in 2010 to summarily dismiss Viacom's case. In what was seen at the time as an important victory for Google, the judge said that the online video site was legally protected from claims that it had known about copyrighted videos posted by users. Thursday's decision represents a degree of vindication for Viacom, which had argued that YouTube's founders knew about the television clips and other copyrighted videos that helped to draw users to their site in its early days. Britain's Football Association, which claimed infringement of Premier League matches, was among other plaintiffs which were later added to the suit. Viacom welcomed the ruling and said it expected to prevail in a new trial. "This balanced decision provides a thoughtful way to distinguish legitimate service providers from those that build their businesses on infringement," it said in a statement. The court delivered a definitive, common sense message to YouTube - intentionally ignoring theft is not protected by the law. While reviving the case, however, the appeals court judges supported the most important legal conclusions reached by the lower court and appeared to leave room for Viacom and the other plaintiffs to push their case over only a limited number of the 79,000 video clips that were included in the initial suit. Attempting to minimise the impact of the decision, YouTube said in a statement: "All that is left of the Viacom lawsuit that began as a wholesale attack on YouTube is a dispute over a tiny percentage of videos long ago removed from YouTube. Nothing in this decision impacts the way YouTube is operating. YouTube will continue to be a vibrant forum for free expression around the world. In its evidence, Viacom pointed to surveys by YouTube employees indicating that 75 to 80 per cent of videos streamed by the site contained copyrighted material. However, Judge José Cabranes, writing for the appeals court, said that the lower court had been right to argue that YouTube should only be held liable if it knew about, or was aware of, specific cases of infringement. The judge pointed to a number of instances in which YouTube's founders and other executives alluded to specific TV shows and other types of copyrighted content on their site, including soccer games involving clubs that included Manchester United and Chelsea. In these cases, he added, "a reasonable jury could find that YouTube had actual knowledge or awareness of specific infringing activity on its website," and the case should be sent back for trial. The appeals court also asked the lower court to look again at number of the legal issues raised by the case, including whether the YouTube founders should face a claim that they had deliberately turned a blind eye to potential infringement and whether, under one interpretation, they could be held liable even if they didn't know about specific copyrighted videos. A loss at trial would represent Google's most damaging legal setback in the various claims that have been levelled over its handling of copyrighted material. However, the financial and business implications would be limited due to the narrowing of the case to a smaller number of clips, as well as the length of time the complaint has taken to be heard. Viacom's complaint covers alleged infringements between 2005 and 2008, after which YouTube changed its practices to screen videos uploaded by its users for copyrighted material.