Robertson v. Thomson Corp.
| Robertson v Thomson Corp | |
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| Hearing: December 6, 2005; April 18, 2006 Judgment: October 12, 2006 |
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| Full case name | Heather Robertson v Thomson Corporation |
| Citations | 2006 SCC 43 |
| Prior history | Judgment for Thomson at Ont. C.A. (2004), 72 O.R. (3d) 481 |
| Ruling | Robertson appeal dismissed. Cross-appeal allowed on CD-Rom issue. |
| Court Membership | |
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Chief Justice: Beverley McLachlin Puisne Justices: Michel Bastarache, Ian Binnie, Louis LeBel, Marie Deschamps, Morris Fish, Rosalie Abella, Louise Charron, Marshall Rothstein |
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| Reasons given | |
| Majority | LeBel and Fish JJ., joined by Bastarache, Deschamps and Rothstein JJ. |
| Concur/dissent | Abella J., joined by McLachlin C.J. and Binnie and Charron JJ. |
Robertson v Thomson Corp, [2006] 2 S.C.R. 363 , 2006 SCC 43 is a 2006 Supreme Court of Canada decision on the ownership of copyright in published text that are stored in databases. The ruling held that though a newspaper held the copyright in the collection and the arrangement of freelance articles and in its newspaper, it could not publish the articles within a database. Publication within the database would remove the articles from the context of the collective work and therefore their publication as such was not within the rights held by the newspaper.
In 1995, Heather Robertson, a freelance writer, wrote two articles that were published in the print edition of the Globe and Mail. Later, the newspaper placed copies of her articles in three databases, including Info Globe Online, an online database of Globe and Mail articles, as well as the Canadian Periodical Index. The databases did not contain many aspects of the print version of the Globe and Mail. They did not contain the advertisements, some tables, photographs, artwork, photo captions, birth and death notices, financial tables, weather forecasts and some design elements.
Heather Robertson objected to the presence of her articles in the databases and sued the Globe and Mail for unauthorized reproduction of her work. The case was granted class action status. Robertson also asserted claims on behalf of salaried writers at the Globe.
The issue before the Court was whether the reproduction of Robertson's articles were part of the Globe's copyright in its newspaper or if the reproduction infringes Robertson's copyright in her work.
At trial and on appeal, the courts found in favour of Robertson. It was noted that for the Globe to seek protection under its collective copyright the database must constitute a newspaper or consist of a "substantial part thereof in any material form whatever". A substantial part of a newspaper exists in the arranging and formatting of articles, much of which is lost when the articles are put on a database. Thus, the courts found that the database was not merely a newspaper in a different guise but a new work.
Four issues were presented to the Supreme Court to decide:
On the appeal:
On the cross-appeal:
Whether the electronic databases infringed the right of
The bulk of the opinion was focused on the first of the cross-appeal issues.
The Court first recognized that the author held the copyright in her articles, and the newspaper held the copyright in the compilation or collection of works that contained them. As a result, the issue became whether the electronic databases were a reproduction of the original article, or of the newspaper.
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