The court considered what rights existed in the annual football fixture lists created by the claimants. The claimants said that the list was created only with a considerable effort applying certain rules. The defendants denied that any copyright existed. Held: The process involved considerable effort and was not deterministic. The Directive seeks to harmonise copyright … Continue reading Football Dataco Ltd and Others v Brittens Pools Ltd (In Action 3222) and Others: ChD 23 Apr 2010

The claimants asserted ownership of copyright in football fixture lists as a database right. The defendant denied that they attracted any such right. The judge had found that significant skill and labour went into the preparation of the list. Held: The appeal failed in general, but the court referred a limited questiion to the ECJ … Continue reading Football Dataco Ltd and Others v Yahoo! UK Ltd and Others: CA 9 Dec 2010

ECJ The term database as defined in Article 1(2) of Directive 96/9/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 March 1996 on the legal protection of databases refers to any collection of works, data or other materials, separable from one another without the value of their contents being affected, including a method … Continue reading Fixtures Marketing v Organismos prognostikon agonon podosfairou AE (OPAP): ECJ 9 Nov 2004

The claimant alleged infringement by the defendant of assorted intellectual property rights in its database. It provided systems for recovering materials deleted from Nokia mobile phones. Held: ‘the present case is concerned with a collection of numerical data . . the individual items of data are not protected by copyright. It follows that the collection … Continue reading Forensic Telecommunications Services Ltd v West Yorkshire Police and Another: ChD 9 Nov 2011