Intellectual Property Law
Copyright Problem Question [Disclaimer: This problem is based on a real world example but some of the case details and participants’ names havebeen altered]
The first episode of the popular sci-fi television show, Doctor Who, called An Unearthly Child,was aired on the BBC in December 1963. A draft script for the episode was written by Cecil Edward Webber. The draft script introduced the show’s eponymous hero: The Doctor (a time-travelling alien from the planet of Gallifrey).The draft script was rewritten by Anthony Coburn. Coburn introduced a new character into the script: The TARDIS (the original script appears in Appendix A to this assessment).
The term TARDIS is an acronym for the ship’sfull name ‘Time and Relative Dimension in Space’.The rewritten script explains that the TARDIS is a spaceship that looks like a police phonebox. The TARDIS can travel anywhere in space or time, and that the space inside the TARDISis much bigger than would appear from the outside. The television show (recorded using Anthony’s script) was a big hit, and Doctor Who remains one of the BBC’s most commercially successful products.
To this day, The Doctor travels in the TARDIS. Anthony received the inspiration for the TARDIS while walking home one night through Wimbledon Common (South West London). Anthony spotted two blue police boxes and was struck by the ‘alien’ nature of the boxes in the peaceful green parkland of the Common.Anthony saw the connection between the alien nature of Page 3 of 48 the police boxes, and the alien Doctor Who script that he was rewriting.Coburn spent the next three weeks reworking the An Unearthly Child script to introduce the TARDIS character. When Anthony created the TARDIS character, he was employed as a script writer by the BBC. Coburn’scontract with the BBC employed him indefinitely.
During this time, his contractual dutiesincluded ‘writing fictional television shows for broadcast on the BBC’. The contract did not state anything regarding ownership of copyright. Later,in 1964, Coburn left his employment and became a freelancer. He continued to write for the BBC until 1967. In 1977, Anthony Coburn died.His assets initially passed to his wife. When his wife died in 2010, the assets passed to their daughter, Stephanie Coburn. In 2013, the BBC aired a biographical television film called An Adventure in Space and Time. The film provided a dramatised retelling of the creation of the Doctor Who in the 1960s (the script for which waswritten by Mark Gatiss). The film does not explain who created the TARDIS character. Anthony Coburn’s contribution to Doctor Who is not mentioned.
Stephanie Coburn has recently brought a copyright infringement action against the BBC on two grounds under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First, she argues that the BBC has infringed her economic right to reproduce the TARDIS. According to Stephanie, her father had only given the BBC ‘informal’ permissionto use the TARDIS. She claims that,upon her father’s death, the BBC’s permission to use the TARDIS ended, and the copyright therein passed to her mother (and eventually to her).The BBC’s continued use of the TARDIS without her permission is thus a copyright infringement. Second, she argues that the BBC has infringed her father’s moral rights to be identified as the author of the TARDIS.
She asks the court to:
(1) award an injunction preventing the BBC from continuing their unlicensed use of the TARDIS;
(2) award monetary damagesfor any acts of copyright infringement occurring post 1977 (the date of Anthony’s death);
(3) a second injunction requiring the BBC to amend the credits at the end of the Adventure in Space and Time film to state that ‘Anthony Coburn created the TARDIS’.
In response, the BBC argues:
(1) They are the copyright owners of the TARDIS due to the nature of Anthony’s employment with them. The BBC,therefore, seeks a declaration that they own the economic rights associated with the TARDIS and have not infringed any economic rights owned by Stephanie.
(2) They claim that Anthony Coburn did not at anytime assert his moral right to attribution. They therefore claim that they have not infringedany moral rights associated with the TARDIS.
You are a judge in the UK High Court.
You must write a judgment deciding the case under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
WORD LIMIT : 2000
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