NIPC Law

Author Stacey Harris   Licence CC BY-SA 2.0   Source Wikimedia Commons   Jane Lambert Business and Property Courts, Intellectual Property List (Mr Justice Marcus Smith) Molavi v Gilbert and others    [2023] EWHC 646 (Ch) (23 March 2023) This was an application under  CPR 24.2 (1) (i) , by the writer, Virginia Gilbert, BBC Studios Production Ltd and the British Broadcasting Corporation for summary judgment in an action that had been brought against them by the screenwriter Dr Donna Molavi for copyright infringement and breach of confidence . They contended that the claimant had no real prospect of succeeding in her allegation that they had copied her storyline and other material for two episodes of the forensic pathology series Silent Witness .   Copying can be inferred where the following conditions are satisfied: there is an objective similarity between the original work and the alleged copy; and the author of the alleged copy had an opportunit...

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...

As everyone knows, copyright restricts the acts listed in s.16 (1) of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988  ( "CDPA" ) in relation to a work in which copyright subsists ( "a copyright work" ). Those acts include copying, issuing copies, renting, lending or communicating the work to the public etc. Anyone who does any of those acts without the owner's licence  infringes that copyright. He or she may be sued or in an extreme case prosecuted. Clearly, if you want to broadcast, perform or otherwise make use of a copyright work it is a good idea to get a licence. As all those lovely artists, choreographers, composers. dramatists, novelists, poets, song writers and other authors need to live it is only right that they get paid a reasonable fee for their trouble. But therein lies the rub because what may seem reasonable to you and me as consumers may not feel reasonable to an artist in his garret or, more importantly, his agent in his BMW. As I argued...