Case Nos: IL-2023-000080 and IL-2024-000038 - [2025] EWHC 2561 (Ch)

Fecha: 10-Oct-2025

The consequence of amendments to a database

The consequence of amendments to a database

86.

The origins of RMG’s PAF database go back to the 1960s, since when there have been continual amendments. The changes have been substantial in the sense that successively new databases have been created over time.

87.

L.A. Gear Inc v Hi-Tech Sports plc [1992] FSR 121 concerned an application for summary judgment. The Court of Appeal held that the drawing of a shoe was original even if it had been copied (by inference slavishly) from a preliminary drawing. The argument advanced on behalf of the defendant that the final version relied on lacked originality because it was a copy was thought to be ‘novel and disturbing’ and was to be ‘firmly rejected’. Each drawing, including the final slavish copy, was the author’s original work.

88.

In Martin v Kogan [2019] EWCA Civ 1645, the Court of Appeal adopted a more flexible approach. In some circumstances it may be better to analyse copyright works on a draft-by-draft basis:

‘[80] Where a copyright work is created by working on a series of drafts, it is possible to analyse the artistic or literary input in two ways. One approach is to treat each draft as a separate, derivative copyright work. On this approach only the skill and labour which goes into producing the draft in question is assessed for originality. A second approach is to treat the work holistically as a single work which required the totality of the skill and labour involved in producing all the drafts to produce it. Often the choice between these two approaches will not matter, for example if it is clear that one author produced all the drafts, or all the authors made the work in the course of their employment for a single employer in whom the copyright will vest by operation of law. Where all the relevant copyright is vested in the same person, splitting up the skill and labour into historical chunks will only add complexity. The present case, by contrast, was one where one could see from the pleadings that it could well matter which approach was taken, as it was clear that Ms Kogan had been more involved in the early drafts than the later ones. Certainly, this was never a case which would turn on the circumstances relating to the converting of the penultimate draft into the final screenplay.’