The Swedish Supreme Court ruled in a very interesting case regarding copyright protection of sport broadcasts.
In this case the Swedish company C More broadcasts hokey matches from the Swedish league through its website to every consumer with account and against the relevant payment. The broadcast happens through a link which is given to the consumer after payment though this link can be acquired by every technically knowledgeable persons.
The problem arose when another sites gave an opportunity to its users to publish such illegal links in its chats.
According to the court, the broadcasting of sport events cannot be perceived as subject to copyright protection due to the fact that there is no intellectual creation in this case, sport events exists regardless of the broadcasting which by itself can’t change them in any creative manner.
Nevertheless, the Court acknowledge that there is an infringement of the neighbouring rights on the replays which obviously are taken as an intellectual creation most probably because they are chosen carefully through intellectual efforts.
It is strange that the Court didn’t rule on the claims for infringement of different elements part of the broadcasts such as animations, logos and so on.
The conclusion here is that in every similar case of broadcast, all of its elements have to be taken into consideration so as an assessment to be made whether there is any copyright or related rights infringement or not.
Source: Eleonora Rosati for IPKat.
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY PLANET 