Is it a fair deal to tell tales on the tabloids?

Abstract

Legal context. A recent High Court judgment, Fraser-Woodward Limited v BBC and Brighter Pictures Limited, is of key interest to those that use or advise upon the use of copyright material for the purposes of criticism or review. Key points. This case involved the use of newspaper photographs of David and Victoria Beckham in a television documentary about the relationship between celebrities and the press. The programme illustrated its theme using screenshots of tabloid newspaper pages, which inevitably included a number of photographs. The claimant was the copyright holder in respect of a number of the photographs, and alleged that their reproduction in the TV programme was an infringement of copyright. The defendants successfully relied upon the fair dealing and incidental inclusion defences to copyright infringement. Practical significance. Although each fair dealing case will ultimately turn on its own facts, Mann J gave a very useful review of the state of copyright law in this difficult area.