Copyright infringement court rejects Fairfax's claim

The Federal Court in Australia has ruled that Fairfax Media cannot claim copyright over headlines in the The Australian Financial Review.

The decision is being seen by publishing industry to significantly impact the reproduction of newspaper articles, according to The Australian newspaper.

In her verdict judge Annabelle Bennett yesterday ruled that publisher Reed International had infringed no copyright law by reproducing The AFR's headlines as part of LexisNexis and ABIX news that provide article abstracts in newspapers and magazines.

News content reproduction has become an increasingly vexed issue for media companies such as Fairfax and News Limited (publisher of The Australian).

Under chief executive Michael Gill, The AFR operates an expensive but exclusive paid-content model. The AFR's position is that the summaries that Reed provides are intended to ''substitute for the article for significant number of readers'' and it had breached copyright with its verbatim reproduction of some headlines and bylines.

However, according Bennett none of the 10 headlines selected by Fairfax for the case could be said to be capable of being literary works for the purpose of copyright.