Public Relations Consultants Association Ltd v The Newspaper Licensing Agency Ltd & Ors [2013] UKSC 18
Two members of chambers have been involved in this long running dispute concerning the licensing by the NLA of internet news aggregation services. Henry Carr QC represented Meltwater and the PRCA in the Copyright Tribunal in a successful challenge to the NLA’s licensing scheme. In parallel with this the NLA brought a claim in the High court against them to determine whether end users infringed the NLA’s copyrights and therefore required a licence. Michael Silverleaf QC represented Meltwater and the PRCA in the High Court and Court of Appeal. Henry Carr QC took up the cudgels in the Supreme Court.
The Court was asked to determine the scope of the temporary copying exception to copyright infringement introduced by Article 5.1 of Directive 2001/29/EC. The question was whether the copies of a webpage made on a person’s hard-drive and screen during browsing the internet fell within the exception to infringement.
The Court held that such use would not amount to copyright infringement. The court considered that this was an important issue not only to UK internet users and so made a reference to the European Court of Justice to ensure a uniform application of the law throughout the EU.