MUMBAI: The issue of copyright infringement may be given short shrift in India but in the US news sites are doing their best to ensure that their content is not being used without permission.

Fast Search & Transfer which develops enterprise search and real-time alerting technologies has announced that news service provider Reuters will deploy its software solution.

A company release informs that the alliance will enable Reuters to protect its intellectual assets by improving brand and content protection. In identifying and logging Reuters content on the Internet, the Fast search derivative application (SDA) for content monitoring will generate reports for Reuters that will help the company to monitor the internet for copyright infringements of content.

Reuters' global head of content quality Paul Hansford added, "As the world's largest international multimedia news agency and content provider, it is important to know as much as we can about how Reuters' copyrighted news content is being used by our subscribers, as well as the general public. Fast's ability to filter and retrieve news results from thousands of data sources, in multiple languages, with the highest relevancy for our subscribers has impressed us. We are looking forward to seeing how the implementation of this technology will help us track copyright infringements and protect our corporate identity."

Reuters' deployment of the Fast content monitoring application capitalises upon its current use of FAST ESP. This is Fast's powerful, real-time enterprise search platform. The Reuters News Distribution Service (NDS) uses Fast ESP to provide subscribers with customised information that is highly relevant to the news articles they are developing. In addition Fast ESP enables Reuters NDS subscribers to save specific company and news triggers, so that they can be alerted in real-time as new information on these topics are made public.