Page 87 - Law and the Media

Law and the Media
3.3 Who owns copyright?

3.3.1 Literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works

Copyright in literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works belongs to the author of the work.
This means the person whose skill and effort produced the work – for example the writer of
the book, not the secretary who typed it out.

However, in some cases the person who takes the material down can be the copyright owner.
In Walter v Lane (1900), shorthand writers from the Times had taken down political speeches
of Lord Rosebery. Reports were published in the newspaper. The court held that the Times
owned the copyright in the reports, which had been produced by the skill and labour of the
shorthand writers even though Lord Rosebery was the author of the speech. Other
newspapers could have taken down the speeches themselves and published identical reports
to the Times, but they could not take a short cut by copying from the Times. In such cases,
copyright protects the material form in which the information is recorded, not the
information itself. This principle is of concern to journalists, who are permitted to ‘follow-
up’ stories in other publications but may not ‘lift’ such stories without permission.

If two or more people jointly create a work and their contributions are indivisible, then,
unlike the tune and the lyric in a song, copyright is owned jointly. If a ghost writer produces
an autobiography or a newspaper series, the ghost writer owns the copyright subject to any
agreement otherwise.

The author has to be a living human being, not a corporation. Where work is produced with the
aid of or is generated by computers, the person who undertakes the arrangements necessary for
the creation of the work is the author. In Express Newspapers Plc v Liverpool Daily Post &
Echo Plc (1985) the Daily Express distributed bingo cards to readers and each day printed a
series of winning numbers generated by a computer on a grid. It was not necessary to buy the
Express in order to take part in the game (at the time this would have been an unlawful lottery).
A provincial newspaper reproduced the winning numbers printed in the Express. The court
ruled that the Express was able to prevent anyone else from reproducing its numbers because
the numbers and grid were an original literary work. The game had been devised by human
skill and labour, not simply generated at random by machines.

Difficulties may arise where computer software is created by the input of several people at
different stages. Where such collaboration has occurred, there may be joint ownership of
copyright.

3.3.2 Photographs

Before the introduction of the CDPA in 1988, ownership of copyright in photographs had
special and different rules. The basic rule was that the person who owned the film in the
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