Technology news and Jobs 
Information Technology News IceTV wins copyright battle with Nine Network
Information Technology News IceTV wins copyright battle with Nine Network | IceTV wins copyright battle with Nine Network |
|
| by Adam Turner | |
| Thursday, 09 August 2007 | |
|
Page 2 of 3
SUMMARY OF FINDINGS The Weekly Schedule is the copyright work2 The work produced by Nine that is relevant to these proceedings is the Weekly Schedule. The Weekly Schedule is a product of Nine’s skill and labour in selecting and ordering programs for broadcast. It is also a product of Nine’s skill and labour in presenting or arranging the information therein in the form chosen by Nine. That skill and labour includes the synopses drafted or edited by Nine. Ice accepts that copyright subsists in each Weekly Schedule as an original literary work (s 32 of the Act). Featured Whitepaper
5 Best Practices for Smartphone Support
3 Each of the components of the Weekly Schedule, including the days of the week, program time and title, additional program information and the synopses, are an integral part of that compilation. Copyright subsists in the compilation as a whole. Nine cannot claim copyright in the time and title information for a single day or week as if that information were itself a separate compilation. Nor can Nine claim copyright in its Late Change Notices. The Late Changes Notices are neither accessed by Ice nor included in the Weekly Schedule. The Aggregated Guides are separate compilations4 The Aggregators integrate the information in the Weekly Schedule with comparable information obtained from other free to air networks for publication in the Aggregated Guides. The aggregation of information does not “destroy” Nine’s copyright in the Weekly Schedule. It does, however, result in the creation of the Aggregated Guides: compilations which are themselves separate and distinct from the Weekly Schedule. The Aggregated Guides are a product of the skill and labour of the Aggregators and their clients (eg, Yahoo). They differ in form and content to the Weekly Schedule. It can, however, be said that the preparatory skill and labour protected by the copyright in the Weekly Schedule remains as Nine’s preparatory skill and labour for that part of the Aggregated Guides. Ice does not infringe copyright in the Weekly Schedule5 It is open at law to a person to ascertain the facts recorded in a compilation by independent inquiry and to compile his or her own compilation on the basis of that independent inquiry (Desktop). This is what Ice did during the “torture period” in 2004, when Mr Rilett developed the Templates for 7 Nine submits, as its primary case, that the making and updating of the IceGuide in this manner has resulted in the reproduction of a substantial part of its copyright work. This is a question of fact and degree to be tested by reference to the similarity between the works, the extent of actual copying, the quality and originality of what is taken and the interest which the copyright protects. Each case turns on its own facts. 8 Nine relies heavily on Desktop. Desktop was, however, a “whole of universe” case. A telephone directory permits no selection of the subscribers to be included and only one mode of arrangement and expression of the factual information therein. The interest that the copyright protected in Desktop was the skill and labour of gathering together in one place the details of all of the members of a given universe – the telephone subscribers in a region. By reason of the subject matter, the manner of alphabetical arrangement of the information was inevitable. CONTINUED |
| < Next story in category | Previous story in the category > |
|---|
