International Law

Yesterday the Full Court of the Federal Court of Australia handed down its decision in Nine Network Australia Pty Limited v IceTV Pty Limited, a very interesting copyright case relating to electronic TV programming guides.  The opening paragraph of the Court's decision neatly summarises the issue:

The main issue in this appeal is whether the primary Judge correctly rejected the claim by the appellant (?Nine?) that the respondents (?Ice?) had infringed Nine?s copyright in its television program schedules.  There is no dispute that the schedules are compilations and constitute original literary works in which Nine holds copyright.  Specifically, there is no dispute that Nine holds copyright in the ?Weekly Schedules? it distributes selectively to so-called ?Aggregators? approximately two weeks before the commencement of the relevant broadcast week.  However, her Honour held that Nine had not established that Ice, which provides a subscription-based ?electronic program guide? (?EPG?) for television called ?IceGuide?, has reproduced a substantial part of Nine?s copyright works.

The Court upheld the appeal, finding that IceTV had infringed Nine's copyright in its TV programming schedules.  I've followed this case for some (see, for example, here) and I hope to have something to say about it in the next week or so.  In the meantime, check out Kim Weatherall's excellent post on the case here (even if you're not a lawyer you'll be able to understand Kim's summary of the case).  And of course you can read the decision on AustLII here.