“PIRACY” NOT PROVED

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21826, 4 July 1936, Page 10

“PIRACY” NOT PROVED

CLAIM FOR COPYRIGHT FAILS (THE PRESS Special Service.] WELLINGTON. July 3. Holding that no “piracy," as was alleged by the plaintiff company, had been committed, his Honour Mr Justice Blair, in me Supreme Court, gave judgment with costs for Percival Mahon Brooker, annotator of statutes, of Wellington, agafnst whom a claim for £SOO damages for infringement of copyright had been claimed by John Friend, Ltd., statute annotators, of Wanganui. The company also claimed an injunction. The principal of the plain c.ff company was Mrs Ethel Holmwood Brooker, formerly wife of John Friend, who had carried on the business after Mr Friend’s death and had ultimately married defendant, who had been engaged to help with the work and who was dismissed in 1935. Mr E. D. Blundell appeared for the plaintiff company and Mr E. Parry,

with him Mr D. J. Dalglish, for the defendant. His Honour stressed the point that an annotator would unconsciously follow the methods he had learned in his training. Defendant had been trained in the service of John Friend, Ltd., and would naturally carry on his annotating in the way he had become accustomed. There were bound to be certain similarities in the work of two annotators, because they gained their material from a common source, and their ultimate results would be identical. There were some 88 instances out of 1000 where Brooker had carefully left out certain items because they had become obsolete owing to the existence of legislation which was in force at the time he was doing those annotations. He was subjected to a skilfull crossexamination—an artistic performance —by Mr Blundell in the witness-box, but he came through unscathed, and demonstrated that his previous assertion that his work was original was correct, concluded his Honour. His Honour allowed defendant costs on the action, which occupied lour days, i