The UK High Court has declared that Ed Sheeran’s mega-hit “Shape of You” does not infringe copyright in Sami Switch’s lesser-known song “Oh Why” ([2022] EWHC 827 (Ch)). The case focuses on whether Ed Sheeran consciously copied Sami Switch’s chorus. Accordingly, this case is a useful example of how a court will: (1) assess the…
Original Beauty Technology Company Limited & others v G4K Fashion Limited & others, [2021] EWHC 3439 (Ch) The High Court has recently awarded £450,000 in damages to a successful claimant in a dispute about unregistered design rights in clothing. Unregistered design rights in the UK are a unique right that often catch designs that fall…
Readers of this blog will be familiar with the English High Court’s strong track record in issuing injunctions to compel internet service providers (“ISPs”) to block access to copyright-infringing websites. In the latest such order issued by the High Court (on 3 February 2022), one of the target websites was a cyberlocker hosting movies and…
There has been widespread press coverage of Meghan Markle’s (the Duchess of Sussex) recent success in a claim which she brought against the publishers of the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday and the Mail Online website (“the Mail”). In February 2021, the High Court granted Ms Markle summary judgment on her claim for misuse of…
The UK government has run a consultation on the future of the UK’s exhaustion of IP rights regime. This ran for 12 weeks, closing on 31 August 2021. The consultation was open to responses from businesses, representative organisations, civil society organisations, legal practitioners, creators and consumers. The government is now considering the responses to the…
In a trial to assess the quantum of financial loss in the IPEC, FBT Productions LLC v Let Them Eat Vinyl Limited [2021] EWHC 932 (IPEC), Deputy High Court Judge Ian Karet found the claimant was not entitled to damages for loss of opportunity since that defendant’s wrongdoing did not cause the loss. Damages for…
Recently, the Court of Appeal in TuneIn v Warner Music UK Ltd & Anor confirmed the continued application of “retained EU law” in the UK on the thorny issue of communication to the public and clarified the assessment of the “new public” in TuneIn appeal. The UK approach for now remains in line with the…
Summary The IPEC has held than an employee produced software in the course of his employment, despite his claims he did most of his work in his own time, at home, and on a personal computer. In the decision, Penhallurick v MD5 Limited [2021] EWHC 293 (IPEC), Hacon J suggested that such factors did not…
The relative contribution of a joint author is a factually complicated and difficult matter to assess. The re-trial of Martin and another v Kogan [2021] EWHC 24 (Ch) confirmed this to be the case. We have previously written about this authorship dispute regarding the film Florence Foster Jenkins [here] and [here]. In this post, we…
Summary The judgment in PRS v Qatar Airways [2020] EWHC 1872 considers an interesting jurisdiction challenge in the context of international air travel. In December 2019, PRS issued a claim in the UK against Qatar Airways (QA) for a declaration that QA infringed the worldwide performing rights in its musical works, an injunction to prevent…
