FOR the first time in the
world, a much debated issue has received a legal verdict.
The Federal Court
of Australia has ruled that headlines are not protected by copyright laws.
On September 7,
2010, the Federal Court dismissed an application from Fairfax Media, Australia's
second biggest newspaper publisher against LexisNexis, the global business
provider of legal content, for an injunction against infringement of its
copyright.
LexisNexis had,
while citing the source, reproduced headlines from Fairfax Media's
subscription-only publication, The Australia Financial Review, as part of its
daily abstracting service from more than 70 Australian sources,
Fairfax claimed
that each headline was protected by copyright while LexisNexis stated that
copyright did not subsist in headlines and mere reproduction of headlines did
not infringe the copyright owned in newspaper articles or the newspaper as a
whole.
The Court held that
headlines were not capable of being literary works in which copyright could
subsist.
This verdict spells
a victory for companies that compile and redistribute information.
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