Chapter 15Business propertyend of the period of 50 years from the end of the calendar
year in which the author of the work died. The copyright
then came to an end.
The relevant rules are now contained in a statutory
instrument, the Duration of Copyright and Rights in
Performance Regulations 1995 (SI 1995/3297), passed
in order to harmonise UK law with that of the EU. The
regulations increase the basic term of copyright in liter-
ary, dramatic, musical and artistic works. This raises the
former provision of the present life of the author plus
50 years after his death to life plus 70 years. Copyright
in film now lasts for 70 years from the last to die of the
principal director, the authors of the screenplay and
dialogue, and the composer of any music specifically for
the film. The regulations came into force on 1 January
1996 and apply to existing works. Copyrights that were
due to expire on 31 December 1995 are continued in
force and will be extended.
Infringement – generally
The person infringing the copyright will usually have
copied from the work and an action can be brought for
an injunction and/or damages or for an account of profits
made from the wrongful use of the copyright work.
It was held in Redrow Homes Ltd vBett Brothers plc
(1997) that a claimant owner who asks the court to
order the wrongful user of a copyright to hand over the
profits made from the wrongful use cannot have, in addi-
tion, an award of damages. The case involved the infringe-
ment of copyright in drawings containing the designs of
houses. The decision will presumably have application
in other areas of intellectual property where there is an
alternative remedy of damages and an account of profits.
Infringement – press-cuttings
Many companies institute a press-cuttings service for
circulation among staff to alert them and inform them
as to developments in relevant areas of business.
A property right subsists in the typographical arrange-
ment of published editions (s 1 of the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988). The term ‘published edition’,
so far as a newspaper is concerned, means the whole
newspaper, and questions as to the infringement of this
property right by copying parts of a newspaper must
focus on whether the infringement related to a substan-
tial part of the whole newspaper (s 16(2) and (3)(a)).
In this connection, the Court of Appeal ruled that
Marks and Spencer plc did not infringe the copyright
in a newspaper’s typographical arrangement when it
photocopied an article for its internal press-cuttings service
(see Newspaper Licensing Agency vMarks and Spencer
plc(2000), particularly the Comment, below).
The Newspaper Licensing Agency (NLA) is a com-
pany formed to protect the intellectual property rights
of national and provincial newspapers relating to press-
cuttings. It operates a collective licensing scheme for
making copies of press-cuttings. Marks and Spencer plc
(the defendant) needs no introduction. Its involvement
in these proceedings arose from its use of a press-cuttings
agency (duly licensed by the NLA) to make copies of
cuttings from newspapers; the defendant copied certain
articles for circulation within the company.435
Newspaper Licensing Agencyv Marks
and Spencer plc(2000)
The NLA sued the defendant for breach of copyright
and Lightman J held in the High Court that the distribu-
tion of copies of such cuttings to 70 persons within the
defendant company infringed copyright. The defendant
appealed to the Court of Appeal, wherein Peter Gibson
LJ (with whom Mance LJ agreed, Chadwick LJ dissent-
ing) said that the first issue was to determine what was
meant by the ‘typographical arrangement of published
editions’ in s 1. One possible interpretation of this phrase
was the typographical arrangement of each article pub-
lished in a newspaper, but he preferred the view that
the phrase referred to the typographical arrangement
of the whole newspaper. The latter view was supported
by an Australian decision, Nationwide New Pty Ltd v
Copyright Agency Ltd(1996).
He turned next to the question of whether the defend-
ant’s copying of some articles constituted a copying of
a substantial part of the copyright work. Although the
court had been shown samples of cuttings and of the
complete pages from which they had been extracted,
the issue of whether substantial parts had been copied
could be determined by judicial knowledge of the form
of newspapers. The compiler of the cuttings had re-
arranged the format of the original article and accord-
ingly the articles appeared in a different image from that
in which they had appeared in the newspaper. Neverthe-
less, there was a facsimile copy of each part of any
article which was cut up and pasted. Each such part
was a separate part of the image on the page, and the
‘substantiality’ of each part had to be considered.
However, the court had not been shown any cutting
which could properly be regarded as a ‘substantial part’
of the published edition from which it had been taken.
That was decisive in the appeal, and was supported by