In 1992, Mr. Cummings had developed a concept for a television program entitled Dreams Come True, which he set out in a document he called the Guideline. Cummings sought to obtain support for his project by sending a copy of the Guideline to Canwest Global. The Guideline included a brief description of the nature of the project (a television program that presents and promotes new Canadian talent to the public), an overall goal and more specific objectives for the show (establishing opportunities for amateur musicians to improve their skills and obtain exposure), and specified that participation in the program would not be limited by age, language or ethnicity. In addition, the Guideline listed ideas regarding arrangements and publicity for participants, preparations for producing the show, legalities to be addressed, and a procedural outline for auditioning artists.

After examining the Guideline, and determining that Cummings had not provided any additional details regarding the concept to Canwest Global, the Superior Court decided that such a "barebones outline of a concept" does not contain sufficient originality to obtain copyright protection. The Guideline was "so minimalist and broad-brush, and so similar to the classic Sunday-morning-amateur-hour format of years gone by, that the Court cannot find that any particular skill or judgment was at work there."

In affirming the decision of the first-instance judge, the Quebec Court of Appeal reiterated the basic tenet of copyright law: that an idea is not protected except to the extent that it is incarnated in a work. The Court of Appeal characterized the Guideline as constituting the mere "skeleton" of an idea, with no inherent value of its own. Someone wishing to obtain the benefit of the idea would have to apply their own skill and judgment to flesh it out, and it is this "flesh" that would have value, from a copyright perspective.

Although normally the court's analysis would end with its determination that the Guideline could not obtain the benefit of copyright protection, in this case the plaintiff's claim was not limited to copyright infringement, and so the court considered whether Canwest Global could be at fault more generally for using the ideas in the Guideline. To this end, the court compared the Dreams Come True concept with Canwest Global's Popstars program, and found that the concepts were fundamentally different from each other. While Dreams Come True was solely a talent show, Popstars was more accurately characterized as a "docu-soap" reality show, which used a talent show as a backdrop. The Court of Appeal found that the lower court had rightly concluded that the action was devoid of any chance of success, and upheld the summary dismissal of the case.