Section 5(3) of the 1956 Act provided that ‘Copyright in a . . work is infringed by any person who . . (a) sells, lets for hire, or by way of trade offers or exposes for sale or hire any article . . if to his knowledge the making of that article constituted an infringement of that copyright, or (in the case of an imported article) would have constituted such an infringement if the article had been made in the place into which it was imported’. The plaintiffs brought a claim for copyright infringement in respect of the defendants’ sales of spare parts for the plaintiffs’ vacuum cleaners based on manufacturing drawings.
Held: Whitford J said: ‘the true position is that the court is not concerned with the knowledge of a reasonable man but is concerned with reasonable inferences to be drawn from a concrete situation as disclosed in the evidence as it affects the particular person whose knowledge is in issue’. The defendants did not have the requisite knowledge at the date of the writ because, although the plaintiffs had sent the defendants a letter before action which was followed by meetings to discuss the matter, the plaintiffs had failed to make it clear which parts were alleged to infringe which drawings and had not allowed the defendants a reasonable time to investigate their claims.
Judges:
Whitford J
Citations:
[1982] FSR 565
Statutes:
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Citing:
Cited – RCA Corporation v Custom Cleared Sales Pty Ltd 1978
(Court of Appeal of New South Wales) The court considered the knowledge to be established for copyright infringement saying, ‘the knowledge which has to be proved is actual but not constructive’. . .
Cited by:
Cited – Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp and Others v British Telecommunications Plc ChD 28-Jul-2011
The claimant rights holders sought an order to require the defendant broadband internet provider to deny access to its users to websites which were said to facilitate the distribution of infringing copies of their films. An earlier judgment had . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Intellectual Property
Updated: 08 May 2022; Ref: scu.442535
