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In a decision which no doubt has some further distance to run, Newey J (sitting in the Chancery Division of the High Court in England) has ruled that the owner of copyright does not have a proprietary interest in the proceeds (read profits) made by an infringer of the copyright.

Harris et al. are alleged to be the person (or persons) behind the Newzbin file sharing sites which, amongst other things, have been found to infringe the movie studios’ copyrights in a range of films (here and here, where Arnold J ordered the ISPs to block access).

In December last year, the Newzbin sites appear to have closed down, claiming they had run out of money.

Having obtained freezing orders (formerly called Mareva injunctions) against the assets of the defendants (such as the house in which Mr Harris lives and the Maclaren car he parks in its driveway), the movie studios sought “proprietary injunctions” over the assets as well. This seems to involve a court determination that the assets in question were the property of the movie studios rather than the defendants. For example, Newey J explained the difference between the (already in place) freezing order and the injunctions now sought by reference to Millett LJ’s description:

“The courts have always recognised a clear distinction between the ordinary Mareva jurisdiction and proprietary claims. The ordinary Mareva injunction restricts a defendant from dealing with his own assets. An injunction of the present kind, at least in part, restrains the defendants from dealing with assets to which the plaintiff asserts title. It is not designed merely to preserve the defendant’s assets so as to be available to meet a judgment; it is designed to protect the plaintiff from having its property expended for the defendant’s purposes”.

The movie studios based their argument on observations in the Spycatcher cases that Peter Wright may have held the rights in Spycatcher on constructive trust for the Crown in view of his breaches of duties of confidence and fidelity.

Newey J seems to have rejected this claim partly on the basis that there were cases binding on him (albeit apparently disapproved by the Privy Council) ruling that there was no such proprietary interest and partly on the basis that s 18 of the Copyright Act 1956 had expressly deemed the copyright owner to be the owner of infringing copies and provided remedies in conversion and detention. That remedy, however, had been repealed by the Copyright Design and Patents Act 1988 as unjust and unfair.

There are some interesting issues for Australians.

First, the conversion/detention remedy on the basis of deemed ownership has not been repealed (but is now discretionary) – see s 116 (but the Full Court may not be too keen on the remedy – see [94] of French and Kiefel JJ (as their Honours then were).

Secondly, in Lenah Game Meats, Gummow and Hayne JJ did say at [102]:

A cinematograph film may have been made, as in Lincoln Hunt, in circumstances involving the invasion of the legal or equitable rights of the plaintiff or a breach of the obligations of the maker to the plaintiff. It may then be inequitable and against good conscience for the maker to assert ownership of the copyright against the plaintiff and to broadcast the film. The maker may be regarded as a constructive trustee of an item of personal (albeit intangible) property, namely the copyright conferred by s 98 of the Copyright Act[96]. In such circumstances, the plaintiff may obtain a declaration as to the subsistence of the trust and a mandatory order requiring an assignment by the defendant of the legal (ie statutory) title to the intellectual property rights in question[97]. Section 196(3) of the Copyright Act provides that an assignment of copyright does not have effect unless it is in writing signed by or on behalf of the assignor.

Gaudron and Callinan JJ also agreed.

Newey J considered, however, that:

i) The point under consideration (viz. whether copyright in a film made unlawfully was subject to a trust) was rather different to that with which I am concerned (viz. whether a copyright owner has a proprietary claim to the fruits of infringement); and

ii) The Australian approach to constructive trusts is by no means the same as that in this jurisdiction. In particular, as the Full Court of the Federal Court of Australia noted in Grimaldi v Chameleon Mining NL (No. 2) [2012] FCAFC 6 (in paragraph 574)

His Lordship’s second point may be thought to be a second factor why an Australian court might take a different approach to his Lordship’s conclusion.

As to the first point, one might well think, if such a constructive trust arose, that the trustee would have to account for the fruits of the use of the trust property and possibly even handover such fruits as were still in his possession.

Finally, the Privy Council’s rejection of the authority binding on Newey J (and the determination of the movie studios) may well indicate that Newey J’s decision is just the first step in the war.

Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation v Harris [2013] EWHC 159

Lid dip: Fiona Phillips

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IP Australia has published the first tranche of draft regulations to implement the Intellectual Property Laws Amendment (Raising the Bar) Act 2012 (most of which comes into force on 15 April next year).

This tranche includes the draft regulations for:

•  Schedule 1 – Raising the quality of granted patents,
• Schedule 4 – Assisting the operations of the IP profession, and
• Schedule 5 – Improving mechanisms for trade mark and copyright enforcement.

Comments should be submitted by 21 November 2012.

Download all the gory details, including draft EMs, here.

Lots have people have had a go at trying to explain some, or all, of the ramifications of the Act. If you don’t want to Google, or bing, or duck duck go, the EM can be found on Parliament’s site here and the Bills Digest prepared by the Parliamentary secretariat is here.

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The Assistant Treasurer has referred the operation of the compulsory licence regime within the Patents Act 1990 to the Productivity Commission for review.

At present, sections 133 to 140 of the Patents Act provide for applications to be made to the Federal Court for a compulsory licence to work a patent where

(i) the applicant has tried for a reasonable period, but without success, to obtain from the patentee an authorisation to work the invention on reasonable terms and conditions;

>(ii) the reasonable requirements of the public with respect to the patented invention have not been satisfied;

(iii) the patentee has given no satisfactory reason for failing to exploit the patent; or

the patentee has contravened the anti-competitive provisions in Part IV of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010.

The Terms of Reference require the Productivity Commission to:

1. Assess whether the current Australian provisions can be invoked efficiently and effectively to deal with circumstances where reasonable requirements of the public are not being met or where the patentee engages in anti-competitive conduct. This includes, but is not limited to, consideration of concerns that gene patents may hinder access to affordable healthcare, including access to medical advice that relies on the identification and use of gene sequences related to human health and disease.
2. Advise on the frequency, and impact, of the issue of compulsory licences in comparable markets and the common features in such compulsory licenses.
3. Recommend any measures that may be required to efficiently and effectively exercise these safeguard provisions and invoke their use in a manner consistent with Australia’s international obligations, without limiting access to overseas technologies, technology transfer, research and development investments or substantially reducing the patent incentive for innovation.
4. Recommend any alternative mechanisms deemed necessary to ensure that the balance between incentives to innovate and access to technology best reflect objectives of ensuring reasonable access to health care solutions, maximising economic growth and growing the Australian manufacturing industry.
5. Recommend measures to raise awareness of these provisions and their purpose, including the specific challenges of raising awareness among small businesses and the healthcare sector.

The genesis of the reference seems to lie in the uproar resulting from the attempt to charge licence fees for diagnostic kits based on the BRCA 1 patent and, more recently, the smartphone wars.[1]

A number of submissions to the Senate’s Community Affairs committee claimed that there were a range of deficiencies with the present scheme. In addition, IP Australia told the Senate’s Community Affairs committee when it was investigating these (and other matters) that, in the 100+ years our law has had such provision, there had been only 3 applications for the grant of a compulsory licence. The ALRC had also recommended that the scope of ‘reasonable requirements of the public’ be clarified (the recommendation to make the competition test a basis for licensing having been sort of implemented when s 133(2)(b) was inserted in 2006.

The Terms of Reference also note that Australia is a net importer of technology with, for example, only 1,178 (or 8%) of the 14,557 patents granted in 2010 being granted to Australian residents.

The TRIPS Agreement allows us to do something in this sphere. See art. 40 and art. 27.2 even goes so far as to allow us to exclude from patentability things necessary to protect ordre public “including to protect human … life or health”.

Of course, the multi-million dollar question in all of this is what that elastic word “reasonable” might mean?

Do also note paragraph 4 of art. 40, which gives a country that is concerned its nationals are being prejudiced by the exercise of such rights an “opportunity for consultations”. Of course, such a country might just move straight to the dispute resolution processes. I wonder how a more liberal use of compulsory licensing, or the threat of it, would play with those of our trading partners who consider compulsory licences of patents to be anathema?

According to the Productivity Commission’s website:

1 an issues paper will be released in August;
2 initial submissions will be due by 28 September;
3 there will be a draft report released in early December;
4 public hearings will be held in February 2013; and
5 the final report will be delivered to the government on 29 March 2013.

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The Age is reporting that a Parliamentary committee has “struck down” Australia’s signing of ACTA.

As it turns out, the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties has unanimously recommended that Australia should not ratify ACTA at this time. Recommendation 8 states:

That the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement not be ratified by Australia until the:

• Joint Standing Committee on Treaties has received and considered the independent and transparent assessment of the economic and social benefits and costs of the Agreement referred to in Recommendation 2;
• Australian Law Reform Commission has reported on its Inquiry into Copyright and the Digital Economy; and
• the Australian Government has issued notices of clarification in relation to the terms of the Agreement as recommended in the other recommendations of this report.

Recommendation 9 goes on to exhort any future Committee on Treaties to take into account what is happening with ACTA in other jurisdictions including the EU and the USA.

Recommendations 3 to 7 relate to more specific matters such as, for example, a need to clarify the meanings of ‘aiding and abetting’ and ‘commercial scale’.

Apart from specific matters of particular detail, the Joint Standing Committee seems to have had two main concerns about ratification:

First, the Treaty was tabled in Parliament with a National Interest Assessment  (NIA). However, the NIA did not include an analysis of the economic impact that ratifying ACTA would have on Australia.

One reason why there was no economic analysis feeds into the Joint Standing Committee’s second major concern: the NIA stated that ACTA would not require any changes to existing Australian law. The benefit of ratifying ACTA (early) was that it would give Australia influence:

2.13 The NIA encourages the early ratification of ACTA, so as to enable Australia to play an influential role in the ACTA Committee, which will consider, inter alia, rules and procedures for reviewing the implementation and operations of ACTA.

In the absence of an economic assessment, however, the Joint Standing Committee noted there was an absence of reliable evidence that there is a “problem” that needs to be addressed. See [3.6] and reference to the concerns expressed, amongst others, by the US Government Accountability Office.

Secondly, the Joint Standing Committee received a number of submissions which challenged the view that no changes would be required to Australian law. For example, what does “aid and abet” or “commercial scale” mean? To what extent, if at all, are patents caught up in what is counterfeit?

How valid those concerns are may require further investigation but, as As. Prof. Weatherall pointed out, the ACTA Committee will have a role in developing more detailed enforcement mechanisms. The Joint Standing Committee also noted in several places that ACTA does not include the defences or exceptions expressed in TRIPS.

So far as I can work out (it is a long time since I studied constitutional law so let me know if you know better), the Joint Standing Committee has not in fact “struck down” ACTA or Australia ratifying it. The Committee’s recommendations do not constitute a resolution of a House of Parliament and ACTA is not a legislative instrument subject to disallowance on such a resolution.

As a treaty, ACTA would become part of our domestic law only if Parliament passed a statute to implement it. The Government could still ratify ACTA but the Joint Standing Committee’s recommendations are the unanimous recommendations of a cross-party committee so they plainly reflect a level of disquiet with ACTA within Parliament at a high level: a level of disquiet which appears to be felt even within the EU (one of the IP-exporting parts of the world one might think likely to support such a regime).

Download copies of the Committee’s report from here (pdf).

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The 1709 blog has a good summary of the arrest of Megaupload.com’s Kim “Dotcom” in New Zealand for allegedly copyrights in the USA.

Case 1 (Hew Griffiths aka ‘bandido’)

Case 2 (Richard O’Dwyer)

Meanwhile, some controversy is brewing because the FBI has seized the domain name and apparently blocked any access to the site even by those who have stored material legitimately in the service. Does that mean we all need to start worrying what will happen if our online back-up service is being used by alleged pirates too?

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The internet is all a twitter over the prospect that a 23 year old British subject, Richard O’Dwyer, may be extradited from the UK to the USA to face criminal charges for copyright infringement.

Well guess what, it has happened before albeit from this far away destination.

Mr Griffiths has apparently served his time (in both Australia and the USA) and had this to say to an enterprising journalist.

Lid dip: Graham Dent for the boing boing link!

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On the eve of High Court hearings in Roadshow v iiNet (transcripts here, here and here), the 5 major ISPs in Australia (Telstra Bigpond, Optus, iiNet, iPrimus and Internode) released a proposal (pdf) for dealing with (illegal) file sharers and other online copyright infringers.

Under s 116AG of the Copyright Act, the remedies against an ISP (which is a carriage service provider) for infringing materials transmitted over its network may be restricted to an injunction requiring it to terminate a subscriber’s account or to take reasonable steps to disable access to an online location outside Australia provided the ISP complies with the requirements in s 116AH. Similar limitations on the remedies available are imposed in respect of ISPs in the other categories. One of the conditions in s 116AH is that the ISP had adopted and reasonably implemented a policy for termination of the accounts of repeat infringers in appropriate circumstances.

The proposal can be seen as intended to address that requirement.

The proposal refers to the large amounts of lost revenues often claimed by the copyright owners from illegal activity online. It also draws attention to evidence that large proportions of infringers do not engage in infringing conduct after receiving a warning that their activity is infringing.

Accordingly, the proposal puts forward a scheme in which:

1. a copyright owner may send a notice alleging infringing activity to an ISP which will then send its subscriber, if it can match a subscriber to the information provided by the rights holder, an education notice;
   1. a 21 day “grace period” will follow to allow the subscriber to seek legal advice or query the notice with a proposed Independent Panel or act on the notice;
2. after the expiry of the 21 day “grace period”, the rights holder may send a further copyright infringement notice to the ISP if the subscriber is still engaging in the conduct or some other infringing conduct relevant to the rights holder and the ISP will send the subscriber, if it can match a subscriber to the information provided by the rights holder, a Warning Notice;
   1. a 21 day “grace period” would apply for each Warning Notice as well
3. if, in any given 12 month period, the ISP has issued to the same subscriber an Education Notice and [three] Warning Notices and, presumably, receives another allegation against the subscriber, the ISP will send the subscriber a Discovery Notice and, if the conduct is still continuing or no objection has been lodged with the Independent Panel after 21 days, the ISP will inform the rights holder that the subscriber has not addressed matters after receiving the [third] Warning Notice and the rights holder may apply for preliminary discovery or a subpoena to obtain the subscriber’s details and take direct action against the subscriber for copyright infringement.

The [three] in square brackets is how it is presented in the proposal, presumably to indicate this is an aspect they are willing to negotiate.

A feature of the proposal is its proposal for the institution of a Copyright Industry Panel to prepare and disseminate educational material and operate an “appeals” process whereby subscribers can dispute allegations of infringement.

The proposal points out that setting up the systems to implement this (or presumably any) system to deal with the problem will be expensive and, having regard to the enormous extra revenue copyright owners claim they stand to gain, they should bear some part of that cost.

The proposal is planned to operate for 18 months to evaluate how it works.

It remains to be seen how acceptable all this is to the copyright owners (which in turn may well depend on who “wins” the Roadshow appeal). The Australian Content Industry Group, apparently representing music and film copyright owners such as APRA-AMCOS, reportedly rejected it out of hand.

Except perhaps in the case of ISPs hosting third party websites with infringing material or providing “location information” tools to the sites of third parties who have infringing content and, maybe, some caching activities, it is not immediately clear how the rights owner will identify which subscriber it wants to get an Education or Warning Notice sent to.

Also, it is not clear on my first reading whether the Education Notice and the 3 Warning Notices in any given 12 month period must be sent by the same copyright owner in respect of the same infringement (e.g. the one video on a hosted website) or, presumably, may be generated by different rights holders in respect of the same or different activity?

Communications Alliance Ltd A Scheme To Address Online Copyright Infringement (An Australian Internet Service Provider (ISP) Proposal) (pdf)

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As is well known by now, the High Court dismissed Apple’s application for special leave to appeal from the Full Federal Court’s dissolution of the interlocutory injunction against the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. This means that Samsung can legitimately offer the Galaxy Tab 10.1 for sale in Australia pending trial and subject to an undertaking to keep full accounts.

The transcript of the High Court hearing (French CJ, Gummow and Bell JJ) is now up. In refusing special leave, French CJ said on behalf of the Court:

The organising principles upon which applications for interlocutory injunctions are determined are set out in O’Neill and, as is emphasised in those passages, the governing consideration is that the requisite strength of the probability of ultimate success depends upon the nature of the rights asserted by the plaintiff and the practical consequences likely to flow from the grant of interlocutory relief, the reference to “practical consequences” including the considerations which are present where the grant or refusal of an interlocutory injunction, in effect, disposes of the action in favour of the successful party on that application.

This appears to have been a case where the decision on the interlocutory application effectively would determine the outcome of the dispute, hence, as the Full Court emphasised, the requirement for a reasoned examination of the strength of Apple’s case. ….

That is, as both parties accepted the interlocutory injunction was effectively final relief in that the Galaxy Tab 10.1 would be well and truly superseded by the final resolution of the case (including any appeals), Apple needed to demonstrate a strong case for infringement.

While the High Court panel accepted the judge hearing an interlocutory injunction might not always be expected to forecast the outcome of the case at the interlocutory stage, the practical consequences in this case meant that was necessary. In undertaking that exercise, the Full Federal Court had made no error of principle (and, unsurprisingly, the High Court was certainly not going to engage, at this stage, in claim construction and reviewing the evidence).

Apple Inc & Anor v Samsung Electronics Co. Limited & Anor [2011] HCATrans 341

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While we wait with bated breath for the High Court’s deliberations on Roadshow v iiNet (transcript of hearing here, here and here), it is worth noting that the CJEU (formerly the ECJ) has struck down an injunction against an ISP which required the ISP to monitor all its users’ traffic and filter (block) copyright infringing material.

SABAM, the Belgian authors’ collecting society (counterpart to APRA) obtained an interlocutory injunction against Scarlet, an ISP. SABAM contended that some of Scarlet’s customers were using its services to engage in peer-to-peer file sharing of copyright materials without authorisation. It obtained from the Belgian courts an order that Scarlet implement a system of filtering to ensure that its users were blocked or otherwise made it impossible for them to send or receive in any way, files containing a musical work using peer-to-peer software without the permission of the copyright owners.

It was common ground between the parties that this would require Scarlet to introduce a system for filtering:

–        all electronic communications passing via its services, in particular those involving the use of peer-to-peer software;

–        which applies indiscriminately to all its customers;

–        as a preventive measure;

–        exclusively at its expense; and

–        for an unlimited period,

which is capable of identifying on that provider’s network the movement of electronic files containing a musical, cinematographic or audio-visual work in respect of which the applicant claims to hold intellectual property rights, with a view to blocking the transfer of files the sharing of which infringes copyrigh

It was also common ground between the parties that such a system would require :

–        first, that the ISP (Scarlet) identify, within all of the electronic communications of all its customers, the files relating to peer-to-peer traffic;

–        secondly, that it identify, within that traffic, the files containing works in respect of which holders of intellectual-property rights claim to hold rights;

–        thirdly, that it determine which of those files are being shared unlawfully; and

–        fourthly, that it block file sharing that it considers to be unlawful.

That is, the ISP would have to monitor all the traffic across its network.

While the CJEU recognised that IP, in this case copyright, was a fundamental right. It also recognised that its protection needed to be balanced against the protection of other fundamental interests. It was necessary to strike a fair balance between the rights of copyright owners, ISPs and their customers. This injunction did not do that and so was incompatible with Community law (we would say “invalid”):

47      In the present case, the injunction requiring the installation of the contested filtering system involves monitoring all the electronic communications made through the network of the ISP concerned in the interests of those rightholders. Moreover, that monitoring has no limitation in time, is directed at all future infringements and is intended to protect not only existing works, but also future works that have not yet been created at the time when the system is introduced.

48      Accordingly, such an injunction would result in a serious infringement of the freedom of the ISP concerned to conduct its business since it would require that ISP to install a complicated, costly, permanent computer system at its own expense, which would also be contrary to the conditions laid down in Article 3(1) of Directive 2004/48, which requires that measures to ensure the respect of intellectual-property rights should not be unnecessarily complicated or costly.

49      In those circumstances, it must be held that the injunction to install the contested filtering system is to be regarded as not respecting the requirement that a fair balance be struck between, on the one hand, the protection of the intellectual-property right enjoyed by copyright holders, and, on the other hand, that of the freedom to conduct business enjoyed by operators such as ISPs.

50      Moreover, the effects of that injunction would not be limited to the ISP concerned, as the contested filtering system may also infringe the fundamental rights of that ISP’s customers, namely their right to protection of their personal data and their freedom to receive or impart information, which are rights safeguarded by Articles 8 and 11 of the Charter respectively.

Thus, the filtering injunction did not strike a fair balance between the protection of IP and the rights of ISPs and their customers.

Case C-70/10 Scarlet Extended SA v SABAM, 24 November 2011.

IPKat has the text of the CJEU’s Summary and as they point out, the CJEU’s ruling has some interesting implications for the filtering injunction ordered by Arnold J in Newzbin 2.

Of course, in Australia, we do not labour under a Charter of Rights. Section 116AH(2) of the Copyright Act 1968 does, however, place some limits on a “carriage service provider’s” obligations to monitor:

(2)  Nothing in the conditions is to be taken to require a carriage service provider to monitor its service or to seek facts to indicate infringing activity except to the extent required by a standard technical measure mentioned in condition 2 in table item 1 in the table in subsection (1),

which is a rather more anodyne protection. Also, under the Telecommunications Act, carriers and carriage service providers have prohibitions on disclosing information related to communications (which is not the same thing as a prohibition on monitoring), but there are important exceptions including disclosures authorised by or under law. Cf  e.g. ss 276 and 280.

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Apple’s application for special leave to appeal from the Full Federal Court’s decision to discharge the interlocutory injunction granted by Bennett J will be heard on Friday, 9 December 2011 in Sydney.

In granting the stay on the Full Federal Court’s orders, Heydon J pointed out that the fact that 2 experienced patent judges had reached opposition conclusions, in circumstances which his Honour characterised as the appeal court not disturbing Bennett J’s findings of fact, indicated Apple’s case was not without some prospects of success.

Perhaps more interesting at the level of tea leaf reading, Heydon J expressed his personal concern that no expedited final hearing was ordered in this case:

Secondly, to my mind at least, it is deeply troubling that there was no expedited final hearing in this case. Precisely why there was not, on my perhaps limited acquaintance with the materials, is a somewhat murky question. But why it is that no expedited final hearing took place and how the courts below dealt with the fact that no expedited final hearing took place is a matter of some public interest in the sense in which Ms Howard was using that expression and is a matter which may be thought worthy of close investigation on the special leave hearing.

The Full Federal Court appeared to discount Samsung’s resistance to an expedited hearing.

Apple Inc v Samsung [2011] HCATrans 326

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