Australian Federal Court Awards Damages To Artist For False Copyright Claim

New submitter BarryHaworth writes "In a decision handed down earlier this month, the Australian Federal Court awarded damages to Aboriginal artist Richard Bell over a false claim of copyright infringement. The claim related to a take-down notice claiming copyright infringement from film footage used in a trailer for a film being made by the artist. The court declared Mr. Bell the owner of the copyright and awarded him $147,000 in damages for lost sales of paintings and catalogues. At time of writing, YouTube does not appear to have caught up with the decision."

Comments

I wish this would happen in the USA

[MetalliQaZ]

... just one big case would be enough to bring some sanity to our system.

Re:I wish this would happen in the USA

[cpu6502]

Who the heck is Tanya Steele, and how could she be so dumb as to claim that she owns the copyright over a film maker's video???

ALSO: Didn't Megaupload win a False claim of copyright infrigement against a music company back in December? That would be a major win in our favor.

(Unfortunately the music company then called their friends in the Obamahouse, and they executed a worldwide raid in January, and shutdown the foreign site. Winning a court case is bad form in the U.S. of Corporation.)

This Can't Be!

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

How could an artist be awarded a copyright? Only corporations are allowed to own those...

The defendant didn't show up

[nedlohs]

And didn't bother having counsel show up.

And lives on the other side of the world to the court's jurisdiction.

Hooray for a meaningless judgement.

Re:The defendant didn't show up

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it meaningless? It sets precedence. The next case in that jurisdiction is more likely to go the same way; that seems meaningful to me.

Re:The defendant didn't show up

[dkleinsc]

1. Not showing up is often an indication that they have no leg to stand on.
2. The Australian government has lots of ways to collect, the simplest being that if the defendant does any business in Australia the government can simply seize assets up to the amount of the judgment. If that isn't an option, they probably have agreements with other countries to collect judgments.

So it's not meaningless - they lost their case, and have to pay.

Re:The defendant didn't show up

[OzPeter]

And didn't bother having counsel show up.

And lives on the other side of the world to the court's jurisdiction.

Hooray for a meaningless judgement.

Yep .. the respondent didn't show up and also ignored the judges order to basically explain why she held copyright. So it seems that she cried wolf and couldn't back her claims up.
 
While Bell may find it a bit hard to collect from Tanya Steele, I'd say that she has now lost out on a lot of future work - who'd want to employ someone on a "work for hire" basis if after the fact they are going to dick with you over who owns copyright?
 
So in a sense it is a meaningless judgement, but I think it will have real world repercussions.

Re:The defendant didn't show up

[nahdude812]

Is it meaningless? It sets precedence.

Not from a legal perspective it doesn't. It's just a claim for damages, with nobody disputing the claim. No consideration at all is given to the law because it is not actually tested.

Re:The defendant didn't show up

[sed quid in infernos]

The courts in the U.S. enforce foreign judgments* on a regular basis. The big question here will be whether the Australian court had personal jurisdiction over the defendant, or whether there's some other defect to the fairness of the judgment. For example, if the defendant could show that she had no notice to defend the suit in Australia, then she could raise that as a defense in the U.S. court. See the Uniform Foreign Money Judgments Recognition Act , a version of which has been passed in many states, for more information.

*In the U.S., "foreign judgment" can refer to either a judgment rendered in a foreign country or a a judgment rendered in another U.S. state.

Re:The defendant didn't show up

[Anonymous Coward]

May be the FBI can extradite her to the Australia.

Re:The defendant didn't show up

[UnknowingFool]

It doesn't really set any precedence. To do that there must be something meaningful in the judgement other than summary judgement because one side did not appear. An example of precedence is Lenz v. Universal which established

Copyright holders must consider fair use before issuing takedown notices for content posted on the internet.

But if you're not a corporation, you lack

[tepples]

everyone can copyright, you dont have to be a company

What you say is true in theory. But in practice, defending a work's copyright from the incumbent multinational publishers requires substantial financial resources. If you're not a corporation, you likely lack the resources to defend your copyright from false accusations of infringement. Nor do you have the resources to check the work that you are preparing to publish against every existing copyrighted work to make sure that there is no substantial similarity.

False contradiction

[Another, completely]

The lost sales weren't due to copyright violations, they were due to a baseless legal action (actually, a threat of a baseless legal action) to enforce a non-existent copyright. It's easy for a person to think copyright is over-zealously enforced in general, and also be happy that people fail spectacularly when they try to use that zealous enforcement on copyrights they don't even have claim to.