Robertson V. Thomson Corp. - Lower Court Ruling

Lower Court Ruling

At trial and on appeal, the courts found in favour of Robertson. It was noted that for the Globe to seek protection under its collective copyright the database must constitute a newspaper or consist of a "substantial part thereof in any material form whatever". A substantial part of a newspaper exists in the arranging and formatting of articles, much of which is lost when the articles are put on a database. Thus, the courts found that the database was not merely a newspaper in a different guise but a new work.