Dow Jones has filed a lawsuit against Cantor Fitzgerald Securities in a bid to cancel its liability for $48 million in annual royalty payments relating to the supply of bond market data to its former Telerate subsidiary.
In the suit, Dow Jones alleges that its exclusive distribution contract with Cantor was invalidated when it offloaded Telerate to Bridge in 1998. Bridge later went into administration and Telerate was snapped up by MoneyLine networks.
Dow Jones also claims that Cantor broke the exclusivity terms of the agreement by supplying data to its own electronic trading subsidiary eSpeed.
The suit has been filed this week in advance of a quarterly payment to Cantor of $12 million due on 15 November. According to a 1995 contract between Dow and Cantor, the payment schedule continues through to 2006.
Cantor Fitzgerald, which lost most of its voice brokers in the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers, has since negotiated a series of non-exclusive deals for its electronic pricing data with third-party vendors.