IP Glossary: W


UN agency in Geneva responsible for intellectual property
International institution that regulates world trade.

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Copyright in Photographs: Temple Island Collections and Creation Records

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In our very first NIPC newsletter which we published in June 1997 I wrote a case note on Mr. Justice Lloyd's decision in  Creation Records Ltd. and Others v News Group Newspapers Ltd   [1997] EMLR 444, [1997] EWHC Ch 370, (1997) 16 Tr LR 544. In that case Mr. Noel Gallagher of Oasis and others applied for an interlocutory injunction to restrain The Sun from offering for sale and selling a poster of Oasis that featured a photo of an elaborate set that included a white Rolls Royce in a country club swimming pool. The Sun's photograph was very similar to the photograph that appeared on an Oasis album cover. The similarity arose because The Sun's photographer shot the same scene at roughly the same time and from the same angle as Mr. Gallagher's photographer but he did not reproduce any part of Oasis's print or negative. The learned judge held that the plaintiffs had no arguable case for infringement of copyright though he accepted that they had an arguable case for br...
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Copyright: What is meant by "a Substantial Part"

S. 16 (3) (a) of the  Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988  provides that references in Part I of the Act to the doing of an act restricted by the copyright in a work are to the doing of it in relation to the work as a whole or any  substantial par t of it. The question what is a "substantial part" for the purposes of this Act has been considered by the House of Lords on no less than three occasions. Qualitative Test In  Ladbroke (Football) Ltd. v. William Hill (Football) Ltd.  [1964] 1 W.L.R. 273 their lordships emphasized that the test of substantiality was qualitative rather than quantitative. A case that illustrates that point better than most is  Warwick Film Productions Ltd. v Eisinger  [1969] 1 Ch 508 where the volume of material that had been copied was considerable but such material did not constitute a substantial part of the claimant's work because it had itself been copied from an earlier work. The question then arises, as Lord Hoffmann observed at paragrap...
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Computer Generated Works

There's an interesting post on Sulliman's site on the subsistence of copyright in computer generated works "Les creations assistees par ordinateur sont elles protegeables?" He discusses some recent French case law and academic discussion, particularly on whether computer generated works are original. In Express Newspapers plc v Liverpool Daily Post & Echo [1985] FSR 306, an application for an interim injunction wherapplicantlicant had to satisfy the judge that it could win, the applications judge saw no difficulty in the work in question being computer generated. He regarded the computer as a tool in much the same way as a pen is a tool. He regarded the argument that the computer was the author as "as unrealistic as it would be to suggest that, if you write with a pen, it is the pen that is the author of the work rather than the person who drives the pen." Shortly afterwards, Parliament provided in s.9 (3) of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988:...
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