NIPC Law

Florence Foster Jenkins  by G B Bain   Jane Lambert Intellectual Property Enterprise Court (Mr Justice Meade) Martin and another v Kogan [2021] EWHC 1242 (IPEC) (19 May 2021) Florence Foster Jenkins  seems to have been a rather good film about a less than good opera singer. The idea for the film seems to have been Julia Kogan's.  After a trial before Judge Hacon ( Martin and Another v Kogan [2017] EWHC 2927 (IPEC) (22 Nov 2017)) an appeal to the Court of Appeal ( Martin and another v Kogan [2019] EWCA Civ 164) and a retrial before Mr Justice Meade, the learned judge found that Ms Kogan was a joint author of the screenplay and that her contribution was 20% (see Martin and another v Kogan [2021] EWHC 24 (Ch) (11 Jan 2021)).  I discussed that litigation in  What constitutes Joint Copyright? Martin v Kogan   29 Dec 2017,  Joint Copyright - The Appeal in Martin and Another v Kogan   16 Oct 2019 and  Joint Copyright - The Retrial in Mart...

Pierina Legnani Source Wikipedia Swan Lake Jane Lambert Intellectual Property Enterprise Court (Judge Hacon)    Glass Slipper Ltd and another v Rimson Flower Productions Ltd and others [2019] EWHC 1273 )IPEC) (20 May 2019) Had it ever cleared the ground this might have been a very interesting action. The first claimant called itself Glass Slipper Limited which suggested a connection with Cinderella. English National Ballet has recently staged a beautiful production of Cinderella choreographed by Christopher Wheeldon in the Albert Hall which I reviewed in my dance blog (see Jane Lambert Cinders in the Round   13 June 2019 Terpsichore ). Sadly the case had nothing to do with Cinderella though it appears to have been about the copyright in a film of a performance of Swan Lake by the Mariinsky Ballet at its theatre in St Petersburg on 6 June 2013.  That could have been interesting too because the Mariinsky is the succes...

Jane Lambert According to the BBC, the US food blogger  Elizabeth  LaBau  has brought proceedings against the publishers of The Food Network for copyright infringement (see  "US food blogger sues Food Network over snow globe cakes"   3 June 2017). Copyright infringement falls within the jurisdiction of the federal courts in the USA so I looked up recent filings in the US District Court and found that proceedings had been filed on 1 June 2017 by  William Bowen  on behalf of Ms LaBau against Television Food Network GP in the  US District Court for the Central District of California.  Ms LaBau blogs about cakes and desserts in her  SugarHero! blog . One of her confections is " Snow Globe Cupcakes with Gelatin Bubbles ". The BBC reports that Ms LaBau does not complain that copying her recipe infringed her copyright as "it is almost impossible to claim copyright over a list of ingredients" but she does object...

I wrote a note on Mr Justice Rattee's decision in  Norowzian v Arks Ltd and Others [1998] EWHC 315 (Ch) (17 July 1998) some 10 years ago and updated it slightly after the appeal was dismissed ([1999] EWCA Civ 3014).    I had another look at the case while updating the IP/IT Update website and found that Lord Justice Nourse's decision contained some interesting dicta on the nature of copyright, originality and the interface between film and dramatic copyrights. The Issue The question was whether a young director's show reel, "Joy" , had been copied. The claimant had made a film which Mr Justice Rattee described as   a very short film with no dialogue :  it was shot by Mr Norowzian on the flat rooftop of a building in London. The set was merely a canvas sheet draped over an existing structure on the roof where the filming took place. The cast consists of one man only, casually dressed, and the whole action of the film consists of that one man dancing to music. He ...