Submission + - Oz High Court Hears Landmark EPG Copyright Case (vogelross.com.au)
highways writes: It's rare that that a copyright case is heard in the Australian High Court, let alone a case heard by all 7 sitting judges. This is the equivalent of the Full Bench of the Supreme Court in the United States.
At stake is a small company IceTV taking on Australia's largest television station, the Nine Network over the copyright status of the weekly broadcast schedule. That is, the schedule, not the synopsis of the individual programs which IceTV makes its own summary of each show. Users of PVRs such as MythTV will be well aware of the hassle it is the get a reliable program schedule stream to use for recordings.
The saga has gone on for more than two years with Nine unsuccessfully suing IceTV http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,19248149-15318,00.html but later winning on appeal http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24331686-30538,00.html.
At stake is whether a list of facts like an EPG is indeed a compilation and therefore protected under copyright law. If so, how much protection is afforded? This has implications for the copyright status of many publicly available databases and the limits to which the information can be distributed.
Now that hearings are finished, we all wait nervously for the judgement.
At stake is a small company IceTV taking on Australia's largest television station, the Nine Network over the copyright status of the weekly broadcast schedule. That is, the schedule, not the synopsis of the individual programs which IceTV makes its own summary of each show. Users of PVRs such as MythTV will be well aware of the hassle it is the get a reliable program schedule stream to use for recordings.
The saga has gone on for more than two years with Nine unsuccessfully suing IceTV http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,19248149-15318,00.html but later winning on appeal http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24331686-30538,00.html.
At stake is whether a list of facts like an EPG is indeed a compilation and therefore protected under copyright law. If so, how much protection is afforded? This has implications for the copyright status of many publicly available databases and the limits to which the information can be distributed.
Now that hearings are finished, we all wait nervously for the judgement.
