Originality in UK Copyright Law: The Old “Skill and Labour” Doctrine Under Pressure

Abstract

Certainly until 2009, when Infopaq was decided, and possibly until 2012, when the CJEU handed down its decision in Football Dataco, the unanimous opinion was that in the UK a work is “original” for copyright purposes if it is the result of its author’s own skill, labour, judgment and effort. The CJEU decisions in Infopaq and Football Dataco, together with Bezpecnosti and Painer in particular, are now said to have changed the general principles of copyright originality in the UK and supposedly have imported an understanding of originality from author’s rights systems. This article wants to show that this view is too extreme. The CJEU rulings may lead to a slight adjustment of the UK originality definition but not to a fundamental change, and even this adjustment will not be practically relevant in most cases. Furthermore, the understanding of “originality” by the CJEU is not tantamount to the idea of originality in author’s rights countries on the European continent.