Telstra Corporation Ltd v Desktop Marketing Systems Pty Ltd
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Telstra Corporation Ltd v Desktop Marketing Systems Pty Ltd | |
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Court | Federal Court of Australia |
Decided | 25 May 2001 |
Citation(s) | [2001] FCA 612 |
Court membership | |
Judge(s) sitting | Finkelstein J |
Desktop Marketing Systems Pty Ltd v Telstra Corporation Ltd | |
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Court | Full Court of the Federal Court |
Decided | 15 May 2002 |
Citation(s) | [2002] FCAFC 112 |
Court membership | |
Judge(s) sitting | Black CJ, Lindgren & Sackville JJ |
Telstra Corporation Limited v Desktop Marketing Systems Pty Ltd is a 2001 decision of the Federal Court of Australia related to the originality required to attract copyright protection.[1] Heard before Justice Finkelstein in June 2000, the case concerned the release of a product called "Phonedisc" created by the Respondents, Desktop Marketing Systems.
Decision[]
In his decision handed down on 25 May 2001, Justice Finkelstein found that the contents of that product, which allowed the user to perform reverse telephone searches by service number, was almost identical in content to the publicly listed directories, even if some of the content was listed in a different fashion. The court found that Telstra, the Australian owner/publisher of the White Pages and Yellow Pages telephone directories, had copyright in the content of those directories. Consequently, the use of the data by the Respondents constituted copyright infringement, and the product was removed from sale. Furthermore, as a result of this decision, a similar web-based directory called "Blackpages", published by , also terminated its service.
Appeal to the Full Court[]
The Full Court of the Federal Court rejected an appeal by Desktop Marketing Systems, followed the UK approach in Walter v Lane,[2] with emphasis on the effort and expense incurred by Telstra in collecting the data.[3]
Subsequent consideration[]
On 8 February 2010, the decision was overturned in a ruling by Justice Gordon by ,[4] following the decision of the High Court in IceTV v Nine Network.[5] The ruling stated that copyright was not applicable to these works as Telstra conceded that there was no identifiable author contributing to the publication, even considering third parties, and hence did not represent a sufficient literary effort to warrant protection. Further considerations were raised regarding the level of collaboration required between staff members to warrant the concept of joint authorship, as well as the level of intellectual effort required to arrange and organise the listings. Subsequently, none of the works were established as "original works", noting that there should exist a correlative relationship between originality and authorship.
References[]
- ^ Telstra Corporation Limited v Desktop Marketing Systems Pty Ltd [2001] FCA 612 (25 May 2001), Federal Court (Australia)
- ^ Walter v Lane [1900] AC 539, House of Lords (UK).
- ^ Desktop Marketing Systems Pty Ltd v Telstra Corporation Ltd [2002] FCAFC 112 (15 May 2002), Federal Court (Full Court) (Australia)
- ^ [2010] FCA 44 (8 February 2010), Federal Court (Australia)
- ^ IceTV Pty Ltd v Nine Network Australia Pty Ltd [2009] HCA 14, (2009) 239 CLR 458 (22 April 2009), High Court (Australia)
- Federal Court of Australia cases
- Australian intellectual property law
- 2001 in Australian law
- 2001 in case law
- Telstra
- Australian law stubs
- Case law stubs