Passing on memories for use in a ghosted autobiography is not sufficient for a claim of joint authorship. Tomlin J considered whether a publication had been authorised by the copyright owner and said: ‘where a man sold the rights in relation to a manuscript to another with a view to its production, and it was in fact produced, both the English language and common sense required him to hold that this man had ‘authorised’ the printing and publication.’
Tomlin J
[1923-8] MCC 51, (1924) 131 LT 534, [1924] All ER 224
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Robin Ray v Classic FM Plc PatC 18-Mar-1998
Contractor and Client Copyrights
The plaintiff had contributed a design for a system of classifying and selecting tracks to be played on a radio station. He did so under a consultancy contract.
Held: A Joint authorship claim required that the contributor had made some direct . .
Followed – Falcon v Famous Players Film Co CA 1926
The defendants hired a film to a cinema. The film was based on the plaintiff’s play.
Held: The defendants infringed the plaintiff’s exclusive right conferred by the 1911 Act to authorise a performance of the play. The hirer sold the use which . .
Cited – CBS Songs Ltd v Amstrad Consumer Electronics Plc HL 12-May-1988
The plaintiffs as representatives sought to restrain Amstrad selling equipment with two cassette decks without taking precautions which would reasonably ensure that their copyrights would not be infringed by its users.
Held: Amstrad could only . .
Cited – Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation and Another v Newzbin Ltd ChD 29-Mar-2010
The defendant operated a web-site providing a search facility of the Usenet news system which allowed its users to locate copies of films online for downloading. The claimant said this was an infringement of its copyrights.
Held: The defendant . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Intellectual Property
Updated: 13 December 2021; Ref: scu.188597