YouTube recently won a victory when a judge decided to side with the company, owned by Google, in a copyright infringement lawsuit that pitted the video portal giant against Viacom.

The lawsuit had been filed by Viacom, which alleged that YouTube was infringing on its copyrighted content, by posting video clips from popular shows like The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and South Park on the video portal. The $1 billion lawsuit been filed in 2007. In 2010, a judge delivered a ruling in favor of YouTube. However, Viacom launched an appeal, and last year, the United States Court Of Appeals decided to overturn the earlier original ruling.

However, recently, another New York judge decided to side with YouTube in the dispute. In his ruling, the judge referred to the Safe Harbor Provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, saying that YouTube’s Web video service was protected under these laws.

In other words, YouTube could not be held liable here, because for the judge to find that the company had infringed on Viacom’s content, it would require finding that YouTube had knowledge of copyright infringement. The judge said that the burden of knowing that there was an infringement in place was not on YouTube to disprove.

This is however not the last time that California patent infringement lawyers will hear of this lawsuit. Viacom has already announced that it plans to appeal this decision. Viacom continues to insist that there is overwhelming evidence that YouTube willfully and knowingly infringed on Viacom’s rights.

Copyright infringement doesn’t have to involve billion-dollar companies like Google, YouTube and Viacom. California copyright infringement lawyers find that any company, even a small company, start-up or medium-sized company, can have intellectual property that needs to be protected, in order to safeguard its business.