Japanese Newspaper Sues City for ¥61 Million, Claiming Articles Were Used Without Permission

The Yomiuri Shimbun

15:35 JST, November 7, 2025

The Yomiuri Shimbun’s three headquarters in Tokyo, Osaka and Fukuoka filed a lawsuit on Thursday in the Tokyo District Court against the city of Gamagori, Aichi Prefecture, seeking about ¥61 million in damages. The Yomiuri Shimbun claims the city infringed on its copyright by reproducing its articles without permission and sharing them on its internal network for employees.

In the complaint, the Yomiuri Shimbun said the city had reproduced its articles as PDFs and stored them in a shared folder on its employee intranet for about 12 years or more, from 2012 to 2024. It alleged that city employees could access these articles on about 1,000 computers in city hall, the municipal hospital, fire stations, nurseries and elsewhere.

The Yomiuri Shimbun claims the city infringed on its exclusive right to reproduce its works and to share its works with the public under the Copyright Law and demanded payment based on use fees for 849 articles. Using the company’s internal rules, the fee per article per year was calculated at ¥2,400 to ¥4,000. Since the articles were used without permission, the lawsuit seeks triple that amount.

The city acknowledged in July last year that it had shared articles from eight newspapers, including the Yomiuri Shimbun and some other national, local and industry papers, without permission. It had removed access to these articles by July 25 last year. Mayor Hisaaki Suzuki apologized to the Yomiuri Shimbun in writing a day later. “We did not have a proper understanding of copyright,” he said, and expressed commitment to ensuring strict compliance with the law.

However, in October 2024, the city denied that it had infringed on the company’s copyright.

“Under the Copyright Law, reproduction of copyrighted works is permitted as long as they are used as needed as internal documents for administrative purposes.”

Regarding the lawsuit, the city said, “We cannot comment as we have not seen the complaint.”

The Mainichi Shimbun also filed a lawsuit against the city in the Tokyo District Court on Thursday, seeking about ¥22 million in damages for the unauthorized use of 980 articles.

The Yomiuri Shimbun Holdings’ corporate communications department said, “Articles from our newspaper are the copyright works of The Yomiuri Shimbun. Their use requires permission from The Yomiuri Shimbun. We filed the lawsuit because we cannot overlook Gamagori City’s unauthorized use of our articles and its denial of responsibility.”