The court granted a blocking injunction requiring a number of internet service providers to block their customers’ access to streaming servers where copyright infringements were taking place through the unauthorised streaming of live footage of sports events. Case date: 20 September 2018 Case number: [2018] EWHC 2443 (Ch) Court: High Court of Justice of England and…
A software development company was held to own the copyright in source code authored by its sole programmer on the basis that the relationship between the parties was one of employer and employee. Case date: 30 July 2018 Case number: [2018] EWHC 1924 (Ch) Court: High Court of Justice of England and Wales, Chancery Division A…
The Court concluded that the Copyright Tribunal does not have jurisdiction under section 126 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 to set the terms of licences of foreign copyrights; but that it nevertheless has the power in some circumstances to make an order in respect of the whole of a licence which covers…
The Court held that a greeting card designer was the sole copyright owner of the rights in a number of greeting cards but had validly assigned the copyright to the claimant. The defendants were jointly liable for infringement of copyright in two of the claimant’s cards. Case date: 06 June 2018 Case number: [2018] EWHC…
A full summary of this case has been published on Kluwer IP Law The Court of Appeal agreed with the High Court’s decision that the defence raised by a pub owner who had been showing football matches using a domestic satellite decoder from a foreign broadcaster was not valid, as there was not a sufficient…
The court held that the defendant did not infringe the claimant’s copyright or database rights beyond the infringements already admitted, as none of the defendant’s customers apart from one had access to the claimant’s software. A full summary of this case has been published on Kluwer IP Law
The court held that the operators of a website and mobile applications had infringed the claimants’ copyright in TV broadcasts and films of cricket matches by allowing users to upload, view and share short clips of cricket match broadcasts. Fair dealing for the purposes of reporting current events in accordance with s30(2) CDPA did not…
The Secretary of State’s decision to introduce section 28B of the CDPA 1988, which created an exception to copyright for personal private use without a mechanism for compensating rightholders, was found to be unlawful. The Secretary of State had introduced the provision on the basis that any harm caused to rightholders would be zero or…
This case concerned blocking orders pursuant to s97A of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 (CDPA). The Court found that there was copyright infringement by both UK users and operators of file-sharing websites, insofar as there was communication of copyright works, the communication was to the public, and the act of communication took place in the UK. This…
The claimants, all members of the Motion Picture Association of America holding copyright in a large number of films and TV programmes, were granted a blocking order preventing the use of Popcorn Time, an open source streaming application which used the BitTorrent protocol to download the claimants’ copyright content. A full summary of this case…
