October 26, 2006 Supreme Court Rules on Newspaper Publishers' Rights to Freelance Work The Supreme Court of Canada recently ruled that newspaper publishers do not have an unfettered right to republish freelance articles that appeared in their newspaper. The Court considered whether a newspaper publisher had the right to republish such articles in either or both of two places: (i) in a general database compiling articles from a number of different sources, and (ii) on a CD ROM that essentially digitally reproduced the original hardcopy newspaper, with formatting changes. The Court found with respect to (i) that republication of freelance articles in general databases that compile articles from a number of different sources is not a reproduction of the newspaper as permitted by the Copyright Act. Accordingly, this type of republication requires that the author provide consent and be appropriately compensated. However, with respect to (ii) the Court ruled that publishers are entitled to republish freelance articles contained in their newspapers in database compilations of the newspapers. View decision in Robertson v. Thomson Corp Return to Top

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