By Owen Reyes · Originally reported by Richard Horgan (2011) · Wayback archive →
On September 14, 2011, five days after Nikki Finke’s notorious “SCOLDJA” email response to Prometheus Global Media’s lawyers ran on Deadline, Penske Media Corporation filed its copyright infringement complaint in U.S. District Court.
Then
The complaint’s headline allegation was about web programming — TVLine’s site design and HollywoodReporter.com having suspicious structural similarities. The trade-press observers were more interested in Section 34, the itemized list of 30 alleged Deadline-to-THR repackagings.
Now
The PMC-Prometheus copyright case settled out of court in March 2013. PMC continued acquiring entertainment publications across the 2010s — Variety in October 2012, Indiewire, Sportico, Robb Report — and in May 2020 completed the acquisition of THR and Billboard from Eldridge Industries. The 2011 lawsuit reads now as one of the foundational documents of the PMC consolidation arc. Jay Penske has continued as PMC’s CEO across the entire interval.