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Oz High Court Hears Landmark TV Guide Copyright Case
highways writes "It's rare that that a copyright case is heard in the Australian High Court, let alone a case heard by all seven sitting judges. At stake is a small company IceTV (which we discussed when it launched four years back) taking on Australia's largest television station, the Nine Network, over the copyright status of the weekly broadcast schedule. That is, the schedule itself, not any synopsis or description of the individual programs. Users of PVRs such as MythTV will be well aware of the hassle it is to 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, but later winning on appeal. At issue is whether a list of facts like an electronic program guide is a 'compilation' protected under Australian copyright law. This has implications for the copyright status of many publicly available databases and the limits to which the information can be distributed."
You might be coming from a US position which has gone a different way on compilations, referable to different constitutional arrangements.
It's trite law now outside the US that things like betting coupons, train timetables, etc, get copyright protection.
The basis for protection is the skill and labour that went into them - the fact that you've created them, not a sort of artistic creativity.
except that originality (creativity) has a different meaning in copyright law to the everyday notion of originality. Copyright law is used to protect unfair competition in Australia, "originality" includes the skill and labour used to create a work. This interpretation of "originality" dates back to a case in 1900 (Walter v Lane). I personally don't like the use of copyright to police unfair competition, but that's just how copyright works (in Australia at least).
First article, First comment I read on a Monday morning and I'm already angry (and haven't had my coffee yet).
Mods: Any comment that attempts to put a legal argument to be with such categorical statements that do not contain IANAL are to be modded -1 Clueless.
For the uninformed, Australia is not the 52nd State:
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/DTLJ/2001/1.html
(Albeit decision was held in the Federal Court, and this case is being heard in the High Court so a new precedent could be set, but Australian Courts have held that any non-trivial compilation can be held to have copyright subsist in its own right).
IANAL but IAALS.