Ground Hog Day for the Press
By Jonathan Coad

Anyone familiar with the wonderful film Ground Hog Day will be reminded of the central premise: a recurring day with no change of circumstances. It is difficult not to be reminded of this film when watching the press and politicians assuring us all that there will now be a tough regulatory system which will them all in check.

Read all about it – Court of Appeal confirms that copyright subsists in headlines

In a decision with significant implications for the scope of copyright protection in both online and off-line environments, the Court of Appeal has recently affirmed in Newspaper Licensing Agency v Meltwater Holding BV & ors that a headline or short extract of text might qualify for protection as a literary work both in its own right, or as a substantial part of an article. The Lord Justices also upheld the finding that customers of an online media monitoring organisation require a licence to access otherwise freely available online news since receipt of the scraped media results inevitably involves the creation of copies on the end-user’s computer.

Leveson threat to libel law reform
By Jonathan Coad

In an article for The Times, Jonathan Coad discusses how, ironically, the press would be the main loser should the Defamation Bill be withdrawn or lost.