Interlego AG v Tyco Industries Inc, 1989 AC
Citation: Interlego AG v Tyco Industries Inc, 1989 AC
Rule of thumb: What is the standard for new copyright to be formed? The standard is a distinctive new form of content which required significant skill, labour or Judgment.
Judgment:
The Court in this case held that where someone creates a piece of content onto a new medium this is not sufficiently distinctive to attract copyright protection. If someone copies a painting or a photograph of someone else onto a new medium, either through editing, tracing or painting, then this does not confer a whole new form of copyright which then gives the new person any rights in that copyright, in spite of the hard work taken to do this, ‘.. the simplest case of artistic copyright... a... photograph. It takes great skill, judgment and labour to produce a good copy by painting or to produce an enlarged photograph from a positive print, but no one would reasonably contend that the copy painting or enlargement was an “original” artistic work in which the copier is entitled to claim the copyright. Skill, labour or judgement merely in the process of copying cannot confer originality... A well-executed tracing is the result of much labour and skill but remains what it is, a tracing...’ Lord Oliver, at 262
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