Re: Copyright in headlines

John O'Meara <j.o'meara[_at_]pgrad.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:

>

Shetland Times Ltd. v. Dr. J Wills et al [1997] F.S.R. 604 (Ct. Sess. O.H.)(Ireland) is directly pertinent to your query. The plaintiff owned and published a newspaper by the name "Shetland Times". They also operated an online edition of the paper, accessible through their site.

Defendants also operated a site of news under the name "Shetland News". Defendants included among the headlines in their front page headlines that appeared in the plaintiff's paper and web site. More over, such headlines were written in the defendant's site in HTML, such that by double clicking a headline that appeared in Defendant's site, the reader is transferred to the respective new article of the Plaintiff, that appeared in plaintiff's site (without passing through Plaintiff's well advertised front page. The decision reported concerned a motion for interim injunction. Plaintiff's arguments rested, inter alia, on their copyright in the headlines. In finding for the movants, the judge explained:

"[Respondents attorney - E.B.] submitted that headlines such as "Bid to save centre after council funding 'cock up'" and the other headlines the complained of in the Summons were not original literary works within the meaning of the Act and that accordingly there was no infringement in copying them by any means. It was submitted that there was not such expenditure of skill or labour as to make any of them original literary works; they were "ordinary at the extreme." [Respondents attorney - E.B.] did not go so far as to submit that no newspaper headline could ever attract copyright. His position was that those complained of did not.

I was not referred to any authority in this respect. While literary merit is not a necessary element of a literary work, there may be a question whether headlines, which are essentially brief indicators of the subject matter of the items to which they relate, are protected by copyright. However, in light of the concession that a headline could be a literary work and since the headlines at issue (or at least some of them) involve eight or so words designedly put together for the purpose of imparting information, it appeared to me arguable that there was an infringement, at least in some instances.."

This was an interlocutory decision and the Judge, much like yourself, was unable to rely on precedents ("authority"). However, the result and, albeit partly, the reasoning, seems correct.

Eran Bareket
<bareket[_at_]netvision.net.il> Received on Sun Jun 07 1998 - 20:04:57 GMT