IceTV Pty Ltd v Nine Network Australia Pty Ltd

• Jurisdiction: Australia Federal only
• Judge: French CJ,Gummow,Kiefel JJ,Hayne,Heydon JJ.
• Judgment Date: 22 April 2009
• Neutral Citation: [2009] HCA 14,2009-0422 HCA A
• Court: High Court
• Docket Number: S415/2008
• Date: 22 April 2009

[2009] HCA 14

HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA

French CJ, Gummow, Hayne, Heydon, Crennan And Kiefel JJ

S415/2008

Icetv Pty Limited & Anor

Appellants

and

Nine Network Australia Pty Limited

Respondent

Representation

J M Ireland QC with S C G Burley SC and J S Cooke for the appellants (instructed by Bartier Perry)

A J L Bannon SC with R Cobden SC and J M Hennessy for the respondent (instructed by Gilbert & Tobin)

D K Catterns QC with A J Ryan and S M Rebikoff intervening as amicus curiae on behalf of Telstra Corporation Limited (instructed by Mallesons Stephen Jaques)

R J Webb SC intervening as amicus curiae on behalf of Australian Digital Alliance Limited (instructed by Baker & McKenzie)

IceTV Pty Limited v Nine Network Australia Pty Limited

Intellectual property — Copyright — Literary work — Compilation — Infringement — Production by employees of Nine Network Australia Pty Limited (‘Nine’) of weekly schedules of television programmes to be broadcast on television stations within Nine Network (‘Weekly Schedules’) — Information from Weekly Schedules used by third parties, with licence from Nine, to produce ‘Aggregated Guides’ containing programme schedules for various television stations — Production by employees of IceTV Pty Limited of electronic programme guide for television using information from Aggregated Guides — Subsistence of copyright in each Weekly Schedule admitted — Alleged infringement of copyright by reproduction of substantial part of Weekly Schedules — Whether reproduction of ‘substantial part’ — Quality of part reproduced — Originality — Information/expression dichotomy — Appropriation of ‘skill and labour’ — Relevance of skill and labour devoted to programming decisions — Relevance of competing interests and policy considerations — Animus furandi.

Intellectual property — Copyright — Literary work — Compilation — Subsistence — Need to identify author, and time of making or first publication, of work — Originality — Kind of skill and labour required — ‘Sweat of the brow’ and ‘industrious collection’ compared with ‘creativity’.

Intellectual property — Copyright — Literary work — Compilation — Subsistence — Weekly Schedules produced using computer database — Whether database also work in suit — Whether Weekly Schedules same work.

Words and phrases — ‘ animus furandi’, ‘author’, ‘compilation’, ‘information/expression dichotomy’, ‘originality’, ‘skill and labour’, ‘substantial part’.

Copyright Act 1968 (Cth), ss 9(3), 10(1), 14(1), 21, 22, 29, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, Pt III Div 9, Pt III.

Copyright Act 1911 (Imp), ss 1(1), 35(1).

Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (UK), s 9(3).

Copyright Act 1976, 17 USC §§101, 102.

Copyright Act RSC 1985, ch C–42, s 2.

ORDER

1. Appeal allowed with costs.

2. Set aside the order of the Full Court of the Federal Court of Australia made on 8 May 2008, as varied on 20 August 2008, and in place thereof order that the appeal to that Court be dismissed with costs.

French CJ, Gummow And Kiefel JJ

Introduction

1 The respondent, Nine Network Australia Pty Limited (‘Nine’), is engaged in the business of acquiring, distributing, selecting and scheduling programmes to be broadcast by various free-to-air television stations within the ‘Nine Network’. The scheduling of programmes to be broadcast involves the use of a database on Nine's computer network (‘the Nine Database’). Approximately two weeks prior to the commencement of each week of broadcasting, an employee of Nine supplies certain third parties known as ‘Aggregators’ with a schedule of programmes to be broadcast on Nine Network stations in that week (a ‘Weekly Schedule’). Each Weekly Schedule is produced from the Nine Database.

2 Each Weekly Schedule contains various elements, including particulars of the time and title of programmes to be broadcast (‘time and title information’). The Aggregators use the Weekly Schedule, together with comparable material provided by other Australian television broadcasters and independently obtained material, to produce ‘Aggregated Guides’, which are schedules of programmes to be broadcast on various television stations, for publication in various media.

3 The first appellant, IceTV Pty Limited (‘IceTV’), commenced trading in 2005. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of the second appellant, IceTV Holdings Limited (‘IceTV Holdings’). They are not broadcasters.

4 The primary business of IceTV is the provision, via the Internet, of a subscription-based electronic programme guide for television known as the ‘IceGuide’. When downloaded onto certain devices, which are available for purchase by consumers in Australia, the IceGuide displays details of programmes scheduled to be broadcast by free-to-air television stations for the coming six to eight days, including stations in the Nine Network.

5 Over the period relevant to this appeal, when preparing the information to be included in the IceGuide for a given day, employees of IceTV used information included in the IceGuide for a previous day 1 and then compared this with published Aggregated Guides. Where there was a discrepancy as to the time and title information, the IceGuide was amended to reflect the Aggregated Guides in almost all cases. It is this use of the Aggregated Guides that is in issue in this appeal.

The proceedings

6 This appeal arises out of proceedings brought by Nine in the Federal Court of Australia against IceTV and IceTV Holdings for infringement of copyright. Although Nine's case at trial was broader in several respects, relevantly to this appeal Nine alleged at trial, on appeal to a Full Court of the Federal Court of Australia (‘the Full Court’) and on the first day of hearing in this Court that: each Weekly Schedule was a ‘compilation’ and therefore a ‘literary work’, within the meaning of s 10(1) of the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) (‘the Act’); each was an ‘original’ literary work, in which copyright subsisted, within the meaning of s 32 of the Act; Nine was the owner of that copyright; and IceTV infringed that copyright by taking part of the time and title information from the Aggregated Guides and including it in the IceGuide, as this constituted a reproduction (albeit an ‘indirect reproduction’) in a material form of a ‘substantial part’ of the copyright work, within the meaning of s 14(1)(b) of the Act. The claims involved alleged reproduction of time and title information week by week. Nine sought declaratory and injunctive relief against IceTV and IceTV Holdings, as well as damages or an account of profits and additional damages pursuant to s 115(4) of the Act.

7 For their part, IceTV and IceTV Holdings accepted that copyright subsisted in each Weekly Schedule as an original literary work. However, they denied that IceTV had reproduced, in a material form, a substantial part of any Weekly Schedule in issue and denied that reproduction from any Aggregated Guide was a reproduction of any Weekly Schedule.

8 Accordingly, both the primary judge (Bennett J) 2 and the Full Court (Black CJ, Lindgren and Sackville JJ) 3 dealt with this matter on the basis that the subsistence of copyright in the Weekly Schedules was admitted. The dispute was treated below as one to be resolved, first, by a determination of whether the time and title information which was reproduced constituted a ‘substantial part’ of the Weekly Schedules and, secondly, by consideration of the ‘indirect reproduction’ issue. Both the primary judge and the Full Court essentially approached the question of whether IceTV had reproduced a substantial part of any Weekly Schedule by identifying the ‘skill and labour’ which was expended on creating the Weekly Schedules, then asking whether IceTV had ‘appropriated’ Nine's skill and labour. The primary judge and the Full Court reached opposite

conclusions on the point essentially because of different approaches to identifying the relevant skill and labour in question: the primary judge considered that skill and labour in making programming decisions was not relevant and that there was not a reproduction of a substantial part; the Full Court considered that this skill and labour was relevant and that there was a reproduction of a substantial part.

9 There was a change in direction on the second day of hearing in this Court. Nine sought to recharacterise the relevant original literary works as the ‘Nine Database’, a matter explained by Gummow, Hayne and Heydon JJ 4. IceTV and IceTV Holdings contested that recharacterisation.

10 We agree with Gummow, Hayne and Heydon JJ that the appeal should be allowed. In the light of the reasons which follow, it is unnecessary for us to consider the ‘indirect reproduction’ issue. The facts and the relevant legislation have all been set out in the reasons of Gummow, Hayne and Heydon JJ. They do not need to be repeated here except as necessary to explain our reasons.

Question

11 The principal question raised by this appeal is whether Nine can obtain relief for copyright infringement arising from the reproduction of individual items of information, part of the time and title information, in respect of various programmes contained in the Weekly Schedules. If this question is answered affirmatively, this would effectively restrain IceTV from selling its products in the derivative or secondary market of weekly television guides without a licence or authorisation from Nine.

The works in suit

12 The Weekly Schedules. As noted above, the works in suit were identified, at first, as each of the Weekly Schedules over the relevant period in which it was said that copyright infringement occurred. There were two formats of the Weekly Schedule in evidence. The primary judge described the Weekly Schedule, in either format, as follows 5:

‘The weekly schedule contains the time and title information for a 7-day broadcast week. It gives program starting...