Groooaaannnn ...

The Australian Copyright Council reports that the recent Council of Australian Governments (COAG) meeting has identified the problem of parallel importation of books as a priority area for reform and referred the issue to the Productivity Commission ... 

Project home plans again 

Kim Weatherall has an excellent post on the state of copyright in project homes over here ...

Waterloo or Austerlitz? 

The Government has tabled the Attorney-General's Department Review into sections 47J and 110AA of the Copyright Act - the private copying exceptions for photographs and films.

Conclusion: no change yet; but the Department is to remain in consultation with owners and users to see whether the new business models based on "managed copies" emerge ... 

Art and the public domain 

Just as novels have, er, graduated to frame by frame illustrations known as graphic novels (shows one must be getting old as one thought they were comics), copyright policy debate has moved into the 21st century ...

Do we need a bill of rights? 

News this morning that Melbourne City Council pulled a painting by the PM's nephew, Van Thanh Rudd, from a forthcoming exhibition in Ho Chi Minh city because 

(1) it did not fit within the purpose of the arts grant program; and

(2) "legal assessment had also indicated it might infringe trademark (sic) and copyright provisions" ... 

IceTV did infringe after all ...

IceTV, you'll remember, (used to) publishes electronic programming guides for tv schedules.  In very broad terms, it generated them by the painful process of sitting down and watching tv for 3 weeks to create a ruough schedule; predicting future programming on the basis of that and adding in corrections and additional information from other sources.

As a result, it took the time and title of Nine's programming schedule.  Some of it copied from aggregated program schedules (such as the Green Guide), some of it "guessed" from watching tv.

While the trial judge found that copyright subsisted in Nine's program schedules, her Honour also found that IceTV had not taken a substantial part.  The Full Court (Black CJ, Lindgren and Sackville JJ - whom you'll remember constituted the Court for the purposes of the Desktop Marketing appeal) reversed ....

The Trials of Art 

Now that the High Court has enjoined judges not to be in terror of making artistic judgments (Burge v Swarbrick [2007] HCA 17 at [63]), perhaps we should be reading Daniel McClean's The Trials of Art which, according to IPKat includes an intro by Lord Hoffmann referring to that Hensher case ...

Copyright in an idea or an expression?

Kim Weatherall, abandoning her self-imposed exile, has a close look at recent Federal Court decisions finding that one project home builder's plans had been infringed by others who adopted the alfresco feature ... 

38 years is almost too long

The Court of Appeal has partly upheld an appeal in the Whiter Shade of Pale case ... 

Resale right 

Now that the new (?) Labor Federal Government is planning to introduce a resale right for visual artists, you may want to review the Intellectual Property Institute's report on the operation of the UK right ... 

Telco liability for customers downloading 

The gloves are off in Ireland (or Eire): the record companies are finally going after the telephone company/ISP whose customers are alleged to be downloading infringing copies of the music ...

WIPO's copyright agenda

WIPO's Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights met earlier this month, 10 -12 March ...

There continued to be no agreement over a proposed treaty on broadcaster's rights or the performances in audiovisual works, but there are new items on the agenda:

1) a Chilean proposal to improve exceptions and limitations to copyright

2) an EU proposal for resale royalties

3) an EU proposal relating to collective management

4) and EU proposal relating to orphan works; and

5) an EU proposal relating to applicable law ...

The embroidered polo logo 

Ziliani imported genuine Polo Ralph Lauren (PRL) garments which he had bought at clearance and other off price sales in the USA.

While some garments apparently only have the polo logo printed on them, others have the logo embroidered using at least 784 stitches.

PRL unsuccessfully sued Ziliani for infringing its copyright ...

A-G's enews

The Attorney-General's Department has published the first "enews" for 2008 ... 

Gowers Review consultations 

The UK Intellectual Property Office has embarked on a two stage consultation process.  The first stage involves the release of a consultation paper on parody, format shifting etc. ...

Format shifting review

The Commonwealth Government has announced a review of sections 47J and 110AA of the Copyright Act, which permit format-shifting of photographs and films for private use in certain circumstances ...

Moral rights and structures ... episode 2

Santiago Calatrava has reportedly lost his claim against the City of Bilbao alleging it had infringed his moral rights in the "Calatrava Bridge" by alterations and extensions ...

Captain Cook's Copyright 

For those with an historical bent, Bill Patry reviews a paper by Sydney's Mark Leeming on the 18th century litigation over copyright in Captain Cook's journals.  ...

Creative Commons, APRA and music 

APRA and Creative Commons representatives held a seminar at Griffith on whether APRA members (who assign all their copyright in performances to APRA) can release their music/lyrics under creative commons licences.

Apparently, according to APRA it turns some sort of blind eye to non-commercial uses ...

Futuretronics v Graphix 

The Australian Copyright Council has a short note about Futuretronics' successful claim of copyright infringement against its former supplier of adhesive covers for iPods, mobile phones and the like ...