Fairfax Media Loses Copyright Claim on Newspaper Headlines, Court Rules

Fairfax Media Ltd., Australia’s second-biggest newspaper publisher, lost a claim that it holds a copyright on headlines and bylines published in its Australian Financial Review.

Federal Court Judge Annabelle Bennett today ruled that Reed Elsevier Plc’s ABIX service, which is included in the company’s LexisNexis service, can publish synopses of articles from the Australian Financial Review to its subscribers.

“Reed does not take a substantial part of such a work,” Bennett said in Sydney federal court. It “is a fair dealing for the purpose of reporting news.”

Fairfax, based in Sydney, sought to expand copyright protection to headlines for the first time in Australia. A decision in its favor would have had a “significant detrimental impact” on all bibliographical and reference systems, which rely on the full title of a book, essay, play, song or newspaper article for identification, Reed had argued.

“Copyright is very important for all publishers and creators but in this case Fairfax tried to push the copyright boundaries too far,” John Swinson, a partner at Mallesons Stephen Jaques and Reed’s lawyer, said today in a phone interview from Brisbane.

The ruling “clarifies these areas of law that are important not just to newspaper publishers, but to online services such as Google that refer to other people’s work,” he said.

May Appeal

Fairfax is considering appealing the decision, Michael Gill, chief executive officer of the Financial Review Group, said in a statement.

The judgment is “disappointing for newspaper publishers in general,” Gill said. “It is inconsistent with what is necessary to protect intellectual property in the digital media environment.”

Reed isn’t a researcher or an academic and uses the headlines and bylines to compete with Fairfax, the newspaper publisher had argued.

“Headlines generally are, like titles, simply too insubstantial and too short to qualify for copyright protection,” Bennett said in her 62-page ruling.

The case is Fairfax Media Publications Ltd. v Reed International Books Australia Pty. NSD 1306/2007. Federal Court of Australia (Sydney).

To contact the reporter on this story: Joe Schneider in Sydney at jschneider5@bloomberg.net.

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