Page 81 - Law and the Media

Law and the Media
Other important intellectual property rights include trademarks, patents, passing off and the
law of confidence. Trademarks prevent a person from taking unfair advantage of the
goodwill of established businesses. Patents protect scientific developments. Passing off
prevents a person representing the marks, packaging or other features of goods of another as
his own. The common law of confidence protects information that is ‘confidential’, including
secret processes, inventions and trade secrets. However, in recent years the law of confidence
has been used more and more to prevent the publication of ‘confidential’ information in the
media. This aspect of the law of confidence is considered in Chapter 6.

3.2 Copyright work

3.2.1 General principles

Copyright does not protect ideas, news or information from being copied. Instead, it protects
the material form or manner of expression of that idea or information. Infringement of
copyright was found where one news service copied verbatim another newspaper’s report
(Walter v Steinkopff (1892)). The law strikes a balance between the right of an author to
benefit from his work and the need of the public for a free flow of information.

Although there is no requirement for a notice or mark of copyright under United Kingdom
law, there are different requirements under the international conventions on copyright
protection. It is therefore prudent to keep a dated copy of the work in permanent form in a
safe place and place a prominent copyright notice on all copies of the work to ensure that
infringers cannot claim to be ignorant of the existence of copyright in the work.

In order for copyright to exist in a work, it must fall within one of the following categories:

Original literary, dramatic, musical or artistic works
Sound recordings, films, broadcasts or cable programmes
The typographical arrangement of published editions.

3.2.2 Literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works

Literary works
The CDPA does not provide a precise definition of ‘literary work’. It is described in Section
3(1) of the CDPA as:

. . . any work, other than a dramatic or musical work, which is written, spoken or
sung.

Literary works therefore include almost any words that are written down or recorded,
including newspaper or magazine articles or features, books, plays, song lyrics, poems, film
scripts, articles, or features published on the Internet.
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