Resumen de United Kingdom: App for sharing sports clips violated copyright
In an action in the Chancery Division of the High Court of Justice presided over by Mr Justice Arnold, it was determined in a judgment given on 18 March 2016 that the reproduction and communication to the public of clips of TV broadcasts of England cricket matches and films via a sports clip sharing app was not protected by the defence of fair dealing for the purpose of reporting current events.
In this case, the claimants, the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) owned the copyright to the TV broadcasts of England cricket matches. The defendants, Tixdaq, owned a website (www.fanatix.com) and developed an app (the Fanatix app) for use in conjunction with the site. The app provided users of the site with the possibility of capturing and uploading clips of the claimants' broadcasts, each lasting up to 8 seconds. These clips were also available on their social media accounts (Facebook and Twitter). The ECB brought an action for copyright in respect of footage of cricket matches (signal copyright) that had been shared via the site. Tixdaq sought to rely on the fair dealing defence in relation to news reporting (section 30(2) Copyright Designs and Patents Act (CDPA)) and on the safe harbour provisions deriving from the E-Commerce Directive (Regulations 17 and 19 of the Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002). The new defence of quotation (section 30 (1ZA) CDPA) was not advanced (see IRIS 2014-10/19).
