The purpose of copyright is to protect from misappropriation the skill and labour of the author which is expended on the production of the original work. Anyone can copy the source material. As regards copyright in textbooks containing excerpts from existing works with notes for students: ‘it is the product of the labour, skill and capital of one man which must not be appropriated by another, not the elements, the raw material, if one may use the expression, upon which the labour and skill and capital of the first have been expended. To secure copyright for this product it is necessary that labour, skill and capital should have been expended sufficiently to impart to the product some quality or character which the raw material did not possess, and which differentiates the product from the raw material.’
Judges:
Lord Atkinson
Citations:
(1924) 40 TLR 186, (1923) 93 LJPC 113
Cited by:
Cited – Sawkins v Hyperion Records Limited ChD 5-Jul-2004
The claimant had edited ancient music scores so as to be ready for performance for the defendant. He asserted a copyright. The defendants argued that the contribution was too little to create a copyright.
Held: To succeed Dr Sawkins had to . .
Cited – Navitaire Inc v Easyjet Airline Co and Another ChD 30-Jul-2004
The claimant alleged infringement of its copyright in a software system which dealt with airline reservations. It was not said that any code had been copied, but merely that an express requirement of the defendant ordering the system was that it . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Intellectual Property
Updated: 09 May 2022; Ref: scu.199976