Barclays, Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley can’t use New York law to block theflyonthewall.com, an online financial news service, from issuing immediate reports about changes in their stock ratings, a federal appeals court ruled.

The appeals panel yesterday in Manhattan reversed a lower court ruling to block theflyonthewall.com, based in Summit, NJ, from reporting the upgrades or downgrades of stocks for two hours or until half an hour after the opening of the New York Stock Exchange.

“We conclude that in this case, a firm’s ability to make news — by issuing a recommendation that is likely to affect the market price of a security — does not give rise to a right for it to control who breaks that news and how,” US Circuit Judge Robert Sack wrote on behalf of two judges on the three-judge panel.