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For whom I care...

1.      Millar v Taylor (1769) 4 Burr 2304
In this case, the court held that common law rights were not extinguished by the Statute of Anne, the first copyright law in the Kingdom of Great Britain. Thus, there is a perpetual common law of copyright and that no works ever enter the public domain.  Under this ruling, the publishers had a perpetual common law right to publish a work for which for which they had previously acquired the rights and no limitation of time for such right so as to cause the work to pass to the public. When the statutory rights granted by the statute expired, the publisher was still left with common law rights to the work.
 
2.      Donaldson v Becket (1774) 4 Burr 2408
This case was an injunction founded upon the judgment in Millar v Taylor and denied the existence of absolute common law of copyright. The court in this case held that copyright is a creation of statute and its duration of protection is limited. Thus, the exclusive right of authors is confined within the limits prescribed by the statue. 

3.      Lau Foo Sun v Government of Malaysia [1974] 1 MLJ 28 (FC)
The appellant, a chartered and structural engineer, had claimed a declaration that he was entitled to the copyright in the engineering drawing and designs prepared by him for the construction of double-storey classrooms for Tun Fatimah School in Johor Bahru and some other schools for the Government. It was held in the High Court that the appellant in preparing the drawings had substantially copied from PWD drawings and therefore the appellant’s drawings and designs were not original literary works so as to qualify for copyright protection. On appeal, the issues arose before the court are;
a)      Whether or not copyright exists in engineering drawings and designs.
b)      Whether or not the engineering drawings and designs are original works within the meanings of the Copyright Enactment.
The court, nevertheless, allowed the appealed based on the statutory presumption that copyright exist in any work. The presumption remains unrebutted since the respondent failed to produce any corresponding PWD drawings for comparison so as to maintain their contention that the drawings were not original. 
  
4.      Exxon v Exxon Corporation
In this case, the plaintiff argued that the term “Exxon” is protected by copyright law because he put considerable time and energy into the development of the name and that there was a significant investment into creating the name, thus, rendering it as an original literary work.
However, the court held that the name “Exxon” is only a word and as such is not capable of any copyright protection. A word alone does not convey any intangible information beyond its dictionary meaning and thus can’t be a literary work. Further, the court held that allowing copyright in single words would overlap trademark law entirely. Copyright law originality is a concept distinct from novelty in design law and from obviousness in patent law. 

5.      Re Dickens [1935 1 Ch. 267
The case concerned the last will and testament of Charles Dickens, an English novelist. In his will he had left all of his real and personal estate (including his copyrights) to John Forster and Georgina Hogarth upon trust for his children. In addition he left Ms Hogarth ‘all of my private papers whatsoever and wheresoever’. Among the private papers that Hogarth received was a manuscript of an unpolished work, originally written for the instruction of Dickens’ children, The Life of Christ. Hogarth, in her will, bequeathed the manuscript to her nephew, Henry Fielding Dickens, who subsequently left it to his wife, Marie Therese Dickens, the appellant. The appellant assigned the copyright in the work to Associated Newspapers Limited. The residuary legates of the Dickens estate sought the proceeds of the sale, arguing that the copyright in the work did not pass with the manuscript to Georgina Hogarth. The court held in the respondent’s favour on the basis that copyright in an unpublished work was an incorporeal right of property which subsisted independently of the actual manuscript.