As widely reported in the media - including by the UK's Independent - YouTube has successfully won a legal battle with Viacom over copyright on the video sharing website. After a long-running case, the US judge threw out the copyright lawsuit filed against YouTube by the US entertainment giant, which marks a significant legal victory for the Google-owned business.

The ruling was made that YouTube was protected against Viacom's claims of copyright infringement by the provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The judge decided that YouTube qualified for the protection of the act against all of Viacom's claims for direct and secondary copyright infringement.

The article quotes Google's general counsel Kent Walker, who said in a blog post: "This is an important victory not just for us, but also for the billions of people around the world who use the Web to communicate and share experiences with each other".

US movie and television giant Viacom had sued Google and YouTube in March 2007, arguing that they condoned pirated video clips at the website to boost its popularity. They claimed that YouTube was a willing accomplice to "massive copyright infringement" and sought more than one billion dollars in damages.

Viacom said it planned to appeal.