Nothing New and Unoriginal

Paper Summary:

In this article, the writer notes that the concept of originality is of obvious central importance in copyright law. The writer points out that for a work to be protected in the UK, it must be 'original', and this only applies to literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works . This simply means that the work must emanate from the author as a consequence of the application of his labour, skill, or effort and it is clear that the existence of novelty or uniqueness is not implied. The writer looks at the British concept of 'originality' first, before moving on to other jurisdictions. The writer concludes that it is imperative that the UK courts decide on a particular view rather than adopting the middle ground, which is the source of its inconsistency. In view of the current situation, the writer maintains that the way forward would be to conform to the EU standard, and for Parliament to clarify the originality concept pertaining to the various categories as far and as soon as possible.

From the Paper:

"A mere change in the resulting product is insufficient to confer originality. The difficulty here is deciding when transformation occurs, but it was highlighted in Interlego that an additional element of material alteration or embellishment is necessary - technically significant changes do not suffice. In this case, the Privy Council had to decide whether copyright still existed in Lego bricks which had been altered in 1973 to produce new changes to the original drawings, since its patents and designs had expired in 1975. It was held that no copyright existed in the later drawings, although the changes were technically significant and the result of considerable labour and expertise. Yet such a requirement is not really imposed on an author who makes several preliminary drawings to produce a final drawing, where each drawing appears similar but is still considered 'original' . For (3), the change must be relevant to the category of work for which protection is sought. Again, in Interlego, the changes made to the drawings were primarily written specifications, but artistic works require the change to be visually significant."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Lionel Bently and Brad Sherman, Intellectual Property Law, 2nd Ed. 2004, Oxford: OUP
• Ian J Lloyd, Information Technology Law, 4th Ed. 2004, Oxford: OUP
• W. Cornish and D. Llewelyn, Intellectual Property: Patents, Copyright and Allied Rights, 5th Ed. 2003, Sweet & Maxwell
• A. Christie and S. Gare, Blackstone's Statutes on Intellectual Property, 7th Ed. 2004, Oxford: OUP
• Mark Sherwood-Edwards, The Redundancy of Originality, [1995] 3 ENT.LR 94

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