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…
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…
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…
