HIS HONOUR JUDGE HACON :
1.In January of this year the claimant, Mr. Tumber, wrote a love poem. It contains about 2,400 words and it is 244 lines in length. It is said to be the longest love poem ever written. The first defendant is a well known producer of TV news, which I will refer to as "ITN". ITN also creates news content for an ITV website "ITV.com". The second defendant ("ITV") is the parent company of the regional ITV companies. Earlier today I gave permission to join one of the subsidiaries of ITV as a third defendant, ITV Consumer Limited.2.Mr. Tumber's poem gained some publicity and came to the notice of ITN. On 24th May 2017 Amanda Nunn, an employee of ITN, phoned Mr. Tumber to ask about the possibility of an interview and about a piece that might be written about the poem on the ITV website. She asked for a copy of the poem, which Mr. Tumber provided. An article about the poem duly appeared on the website. Later at 12.30pm on 24th May 2017, a copy of the poem appeared on the website. On 25th May Mr. Tumber emailed ITN complaining about the publication of his poem. It was removed from website at 13.04 on 25th May. So it was on the website for just over 24 hours.3.During that period there were 137 unique users who looked at the poem on the ITV website, including Mr. Tumber. It appears that two other websites, not controlled by the defendants, found the poem on ITV.com and put a link to it on their own websites. A third website copied and published the poem. The defendants deny either authorising or having been aware of what these three other websites had done, referring to them as “content crawlers”. No figures are available as to how many further unrecorded hits were generated.4.On 26th June 2017 Mr. Tumber brought the present action against the defendants for infringement of the copyright in his poem. He claims an injunction and damages. In the pleaded defence the defendants admit the subsistence of copyright in the poem and admit that Mr. Tumber owns the copyright. The defendants deny infringement on a number of grounds. First, they say Mr. Tumber granted an implied licence to the defendants to copy and publish the poem. Second, they say Mr. Tumber is estopped from alleging infringement of copyright. Third, they say the publication of the work constituted fair dealing within the meaning of section 30(2) of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Fourth, they say any infringement by the third party websites was not authorised by the defendants. Finally, and fifthly, they say the claim for infringement of copyright is an abuse of possess. Here the defendants rely on Jameel (Yousef) v Dow Jones & Co Inc [2005] QB 946. 5.Today the proceedings come before me in a case management conference and, in addition, there are several applications made by three application notices. The first of these, is the application by the claimant to strike out the defendant's defence of implied licence or summary judgment pursuant to CPR Part 24. I have to determine whether the defendants have no prospect of successfully defending the claim based on an implied licence and whether there is no other compelling reason why the case should be disposed of at trial. 6.It was not argued by Mr. Muir Wood, who appears for Mr. Tumber, that there was any such compelling reason, so I am looking only at the first limb of Part 24.2.7.The pleading of the implied licence appears primarily in paragraph 14.4 of the defence which says this:"14.4 The claimant granted an implied licence to ITN to publish the Work in connection with any news broadcast or article about the Claimant by sending the Work to ITN and thereby impliedly authorising ITN to publish the Work. The Claimant granted an implied licence by sending the Work without qualification to Ms. Nunn when he well knew (a) Ms. Nunn was a journalist employed by ITN; (b) Ms. Nunn had requested a copy of the poem for and on behalf of ITN; and (c) ITN intended to write an article and/or create a news broadcast about the Claimant and the Work.”8.There is also paragraph 14.6 which Ms. Michalos relied on as part of the defence of implied licence. It is not self-evident from the pleading, but I accept that para.14.6 is intended to be part of that defence. 14.6 says this: "14.6 It is admitted that Ms. Nunn did not expressly state that ITN intended to reproduce the Work or part of the Work in the Article or Broadcast. ITN will rely on custom and practice that if material is sent to a news organisation without qualification or reservation, it is understood it is for publication. This is evidenced by the custom and practice legal letters to media organisations being routinely marked 'not for publication'."9.Ms. Michalos who appeared for the defendants, also relied on the phone conversation that took place between Ms. Nunn and Mr. Tumber to which I referred earlier. This too is not self-evidently part of the pleaded case on implied licence but to the extent that it is relevant, what the defendants rely on is set out in paragraph 14.2. The relevant part is as follows: "Ms. Nunn made no representation that the reason for her request was solely to assist in preparation for the Interview and/or the Article. Ms. Nunn would have merely asked the Claimant to send a copy of the Work which the Claimant agreed to do."10.It is well established and I do not think it was disputed today, that if a short point of law or construction arises and the court has all the evidence necessary for a proper determination of the point, the court may deal with it in an application for summary judgment.11.Mr. Muir Wood referred me to Redwood Music Ltd v. Chappell [1982] RPC 109 and to two other cases, namely Soulier v. Premier Ministre (C-301/15) [2017] 2 CMLR 9 and Marussia Communications Ireland Ltd v. Manor Grand Prix Racing Ltd [2016] EWHC 809 (Ch). Mr. Muir Wood submitted that all the evidence necessary for deciding the point is available before me today. The trial judge would not be in any better position to decide the question of implied licence. He also submitted that the essence of the defence is that an implied licence was granted by silence and, on the authorities I have referred to, this is not a manner in which Mr. Tumber could, in law, have granted an implied licence as alleged.12.Ms. Michalos, characterised the defence as consisting of two limbs. The first, she said, was based on the exchanges between ITN and Mr. Tumber which, at least arguably, provided a defence implied licence. Those exchanges were in the telephone conversation to which I have referred. However in that regard nothing has been pleaded by the defendants which seems to raise even an arguable case of an implied licence being granted by Mr. Tumber.13.Ms. Michalos said that it would be necessary to cross-examine the parties on the words spoken in the telephone conversation to explore that further. However, had there been anything significant said by Mr. Tumber, that would have been pleaded. Moreover, Mr. Tumber has put in evidence about what was said in that telephone conversation. No evidence, I am told, has been put in by the defendants in response to that part of Mr. Tumber's evidence suggesting that he said anything which now could be construed as an implied licence. I reject this first limb of the implied licence argument. It seems to me that there is no prospect of successfully defending the claim on that basis.14.The second limb is an implied licence resulting from custom and practice. I was taken to a number of authorities by Ms. Michalos, namely Hall-Brown v Iliffe & Sons [1928-35] MCC 88. Also to De Garis v Neville Jeffres Pidler Pty Limited15.Ms. Michalos also referred me to a passage from Copinger & Skone James on Copyright (16th ed at 5-232) in which it is pointed out that letters to newspapers will give rise to an implied licence, granted by the sender to the newspaper, to publish the letter. No doubt that is the case. But it does not follow that the same will apply to a poem. 16.Ms. Michalos said, that in law the question of whether there was an implied licence in relation to a poem depends on its length. There is a sliding scale and at a certain point the work in question will be long enough for there to be no implied licence. She argued that that was not the case here. Alternatively that is something that would have to be explored at trial and evidence would have to be adduced to establish the tipping point between a work submitted to a newspaper too long to generate an implied licence and one which did. 17.Although I have serious doubts about whether an implied licence can be inferred by custom and practice in the present case, I do not believe that I am in a position to rule it out altogether. For that reason I will not strike out the implied licence defence arising from custom and practice.