In February 2024, the Court of Appeal in New Zealand (the Court) issued a judgment on a long-running matter between a separating couple looking to sort out their property. The appellant, Ms Alalääkkölä, was an artist who had created copyrighted works throughout her career. Her former spouse, Mr Palmer, argued that the copyright in those…
In late 2020, the Supreme Court of New Zealand gave judgment on copyright aspects of the dispute on whether Kim Dotcom and other’s involved in the Megagroup businesses should be extradited from New Zealand to the United States because of criminal copyright infringement. This episode, in a case which has involved multiple legal contests, was…
Copyright’s underuse hypothesis is simple: that, unless publishers are assured of exclusive rights in older works, they won’t continue to invest in making them available. This of course contradicts a core tenet of classical economic theory, that investors will continue to produce copies of books (or anything else) so long as they can expect to…
