A freelance author brought a class proceeding alleging copyright infringement arising from newspaper publishers' republication of articles in electronic databases and CD-ROM archives.
The Court held that databases presenting articles as decontextualized individual works did not reproduce the publishers' collective newspaper work and therefore infringed freelance authors' copyrights absent consent, but that the CD-ROM product sufficiently preserved the linkage to daily editions and was a valid reproduction of the newspaper.
The Court further held that only exclusive licences require writing under the Copyright Act, and that staff writers should not have been included in the class because they had no cause of action unless they had exercised their statutory right to restrain publication.
The appeal was dismissed and the cross-appeal allowed only with respect to the CD-ROMs.
