February 2010
Court down under clears ISP of copyright infringement
An Australian court has found in favour of iiNet, Australia’s third largest Internet Service Provider, ruling that an ISP can not be held responsible for copyright infringements committed by its customers.
Movie production houses including Universal Pictures, Warner Brothers and 20th Century Fox filed the claim against iiNet arguing that the ISP should be held accountable for illegal downloading of films by people accessing the internet via their services.
The judge ruled that the mere provision of access to the Internet is not the ‘means’ of infringement and that if ISP’s were held accountable for the acts of their customers they would become a very cheap mechanism for any sort of legal claim.
He added that even if he had found that iiNet shared some of the culpability for the infringements committed he still would have ruled in their favour as they have adequate policy in place for dealing with such infringements.
BRIFFA Comment
ISP’s are coming under more and more pressure, most notably by the film and music industries, to take action against copyright and other IP infringements committed by their network subscribers.
The UK government, which has recently put forward the New Digital Bill, is one of many governments that plan to introduce legislation requiring ISPs to submit warnings to those of its subscribers infringing copyright via their network and subsequently disconnecting their connection if they do not stop.
Though no level of legislation will be able to prevent every instance of infringement taking place online and enforcement of such legislation is extremely difficult to police this is a positive step forward to help reduce online piracy.
It is important to remember that whether you discover infringement of your intellectual property taking place online or offline your rights remain the same and you should seek legal advice immediately on the best course of action to take to stop it.
For further information on protection of your intellectual property rights online and the steps Briffa can take to enforce your rights against web based infringers contact one of our specialist IP lawyers via INFO.