“So I Stole Your Headline But You Still Can’t Sue Me” – Copyright Does Not Subsist In Newspaper Headlines.

In a recent dispute, the Federal Court analyzed in detail the issue whether Copyright subsists on the headline of the article as well. In the present case, the Plaintiff had Copyright subsisting on every article, headlines, and other material such as photographs and advertisements published by them in each edition of their magazine, yet Justice Bennett of the Federal Court refused to acknowledge Copyright infringement on the part of the defendant.

In Fairfax Media Publications Pty Ltd v Reed International Books Australia Pty Ltd, Reed was accused of Copyright infringement by using articles including headlines over which Fairfax had a Copyright.

Facts:

Reed has a service called ABIX, which summarised various newspaper articles in electronic form to produce various newsletters. Fairfax is the publisher of AUSTRALIAN FINANCIAL REVIEW (AFR).

A dispute arose between the parties when Fairfax claimed that Reed had committed Copyright infringement by referring and mentioning headlines of the articles published in AFR.

Fairfax sought the following relief:

1. A declaration in favour of Fairfax against Reed’s act of infringement of AFR copyrighted material;

2. An injunction restricting Reed from future use of their articles.

Key points:

1. Fairfax claimed to have Copyright ownership over every article headline, by-line and edition of AFR.

2. Reed’s electronic newsletter ABIX referred to articles published in AFR.

3. Both parties accepted that Fairfax held Copyright over every edition of AFR including articles, headlines, and other material such as photographs and advertisements.

4. The decision in this said case was put on hold until a High Court decision in a similar case was published.

Decision:

Justice Bennett dismissed Fairfax’s application with the following observations:

1. Every newsletter published by Reed did not follow the same order or format of presentation as the referred original source.

2. Substantial part of AFR articles were not reproduced by ABIX;

3. Headlines do not qualify for Copyright protection as per the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) (Act);

4. Further, the abstracts presented in ABIX were in a complete different form than AFR’s articles.

5. Order of the headlines presented was different from AFR.

6. Allowing Copyright to subsist in Titles/headlines would make it difficult for public to refer to the same as bibliographic reference.

7. Mostly all titles/headlines are published in similar forms to point out the original source and extending Copyright to titles/headlines will make the practice difficult to continue.

Lesson:

This case highlighted the two important precautions to be taken which would place an information provider in a better position in Copyright infringement claims:

1. If the original source of the article is mentioned correctly;

2. The reproduced work does not include a substantial part of the original publication.