Picked up this titbit at Slate magazine, it all revolves around copyright, and of course took place in the mother of all litigious country’s the United States. Apparently a real estate company was using links to a very large law firm highlighting the biographies of various lawyers who worked for them. These links were embedded in articles about properties the lawyers had bought recently. It would appear that the law firm took umbrage at this public information being so easily and neatly available to the public at large, and decided to initiate a somewhat far-fetched lawsuit claiming their copyright had been infringed.
Apparently the judge in question was not overly friendly to the defendants and it all ended up being settled out of court. Which in effect means there has been no hard and fast decision in law made as to whether or not including links from your site in this way constitutes a breach of copyright.
Keep your eyes open bloggers this may be the thin end of the wedge.
Oh and of course here’s the link to the full article at Slate.