{"id":551933,"date":"2007-04-03T11:26:48","date_gmt":"2007-04-03T11:26:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/wordpress\/technology\/551933-think-before-you-forward-that-e-mail.html"},"modified":"2007-04-03T11:26:48","modified_gmt":"2007-04-03T11:26:48","slug":"think-before-you-forward-that-e-mail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/technology\/551933-think-before-you-forward-that-e-mail.html","title":{"rendered":"Think before you forward that e-mail"},"content":{"rendered":"

Regarding business deals, information from someone’s e-mail is often duplicated and expounded upon, or merely forwarded to another person to save time. <\/font><\/p>\n

But before you next click "copy" and "paste" or "forward", read on – you may be a click away from copyright infringement. In the recent case of Cembrit Blunn and Dansk Eternit Holding versus Apex Roofing Services and Roy Alexander Leader, the UK’s high court ruled that business letters can be protected by copyright and that forwarding them to others can be an infringement. <\/font><\/p>\n

The main dispute in this case was whether or not roofing slates provided by Dansk Eternit (a Danish company) and its UK subsidiary, Cembrit Blunn, to Apex Roofing Services were of a satisfactory quality. <\/font><\/p>\n

There was also a secondary issue before the court, which concerned Cembrit and Dansk’s copyright infringement claim. This claim came about following Apex’s circulation of an internal letter, written by the executive vice-president of Dansk, Karl Jorgensen, to two of Cembrit’s directors, concerning the possible settlement of Apex’s claim regarding the roofing slates. Cembrit and Dansk contended that the letter’s circulation was an infringement of copyright and misuse of confidential information. <\/font><\/p>\n

Apex said the letter was merely a restatement of information contained in previous documents. The judge found that "having compared the letter to the earlier works upon which it was based, I have no doubt that its production did involve a substantial degree of independent skill and labour and that it does justify the subsistence of copyright?" <\/font><\/p>\n

Although Jorgensen did not take long to write the letter, the judge stated that his effort was "clearly significantly more than trivial", as it gave his views on the correct approach to adopt with Apex. The judge concluded that the letter was an original literary work of Dansk’s and that Apex had infringed that copyright by making copies of the letter without Dansk’s permission. <\/font><\/p>\n

Although the UK judgment is not directly applicable to SA, it is important to bear in mind that local courts may consider foreign law when deciding on new legal principles, especially where foreign and local laws regarding a particular subject are similar. But, before you start panicking about the host of e-mails you may already have forwarded this week, note that not every letter or e-mail will be protected by copyright. <\/font><\/p>\n

According to the South African Copyright Act of 1978, an e-mail would fall under the category of "literary works" and, to be eligible for copyright protection, the e-mail’s author must be a South African citizen, or be domiciled or resident in SA, or, if the author is a company or similar organisation, the entity must be incorporated according to South African law. <\/font><\/p>\n

As under UK law, the e-mail must result from the original skill and labour of the author of the e-mail. In this context, the expression of the thoughts contained in the e-mail must be original – the entire e-mail need not be an inventive or original thought. If a person were to claim copyright to an e-mail in which he had cut and pasted information from someone else’s e-mail, he would have to prove that he had applied enough of his own skill in expounding or summarising the e-mail, in order to qualify for copyright protection. <\/font><\/p>\n

The reverse is also true – that you could possibly be liable for copyright infringement if you merely cut and paste a substantial amount of information from someone else’s e-mail and send it to another person, without adding any of your own thought or skill. Obviously, by simply forwarding the contents of an e-mail to someone else, you are in even greater danger of infringement. <\/font><\/p>\n

The worldwide web is not limited to e-mails; it contains a rich haven of information that can be researched using any one of a vast number of search engines, thus also paving the way to a vast number of possible cases of copyright infringement through "deep linking" and "caching". <\/font><\/p>\n

In 2002, a Danish court found that an online news service, newsbooster.com, was illegally linking directly to news articles on the sites of newspapers. The news service was using a technique called "deep linking", which is hyperlinking to information, other than the front page, contained on someone else’s website. <\/font><\/p>\n

This made it appear that the content on the linked sites was newsbooster.com’s own material, thus infringing the other sites’ copyright. In SA, if you own or run a website with links to other sites, you need to make sure you have the written permission of the target sites in order to do so. <\/font><\/p>\n

E-mails, news articles and other literary works comprise only a fraction of the information available on the internet that are susceptible to copyright infringement. A plethora of songs and videos are posted on the web on a daily basis, without permission. According to an article in the International Herald Tribune on February 19, this bane of the entertainment industry could be alleviated through content-recognition software, which allegedly makes it possible to identify material that is protected by copyright. <\/font><\/p>\n

But the buck doesn’t stop with large internet search engine companies or even small website owners with links to other sites. Next time, consider any possible copyright law complications before you reply to or send e-mails. If in doubt, seek the copyright holder’s permission first. <\/font><\/p>\n

Comments<\/a><\/p>\n

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For many of us, it’s a morning ritual: perusing incoming e-mails while sipping a cup of coffee. Some messages require time for thought or discussion with colleagues before replying to, whereas a quick reply is dictated or typed to others. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-551933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551933"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=551933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551933\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=551933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=551933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=551933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}