Copyright protection for TV guides
IPRoo - Australian IP News: Nine Network Australia Pty Limited v IceTV Pty Limited [2008] FCAFC 71 (8 May 2008)
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/FCAFC/2008/71.html
Last week’s decision by the Full Federal Court to overturn the primary Judge’s order involved a revisiting of the principles determined in Telstra v Desktop Marketing.
The main issue on appeal was whether the respondents (‘Ice’) had infringed Nine’s copyright in its television program schedules. There was no dispute that the schedules were compilations and therefore constitute original literary works in which Nine holds copyright.
Nine’s appeal was allowed and the order dismissing the application was set aside. The matter has remitted to the primary Judge for hearing and determination with costs.
The Full Court found at Paragraph [128] ‘…Ice reproduced a substantial part of Nine’s copyright work. The required causal connection was present. This was a case of indirect copying of a substantial part of a copyright work.’
The principal issues in the appeal are set out at Para [83]
• whether Ice reproduced a substantial part of the Weekly Schedule by incorporating time and title information in IceGuide, thereby infringing Nine’s copyright in the Weekly Schedule (ss 14(1)(a), 36(1)); and
• whether Nine has established a causal link between the time and title information in IceGuide and the Weekly Schedule (the issue raised by Ice’s notice of contention).
The judgement referred extensively to the Telstra decision;
[91] This analysis of the concept of originality was critical to the question of infringement in Desktop Marketing. The originality of Telstra’s compilations lay in the labour and expense involved in collecting the data. It did not lie in the prosaic method of presentation of the data by means of the alphabetical listing of the names and address of each subscriber: at 548 [223], per Lindgren J; 600 [438], per Sackville J. Once that was accepted, it followed that Desktop had…