By Denis Doak Horne , [email protected]
By Andrea Rush , [email protected]
Published 1/1/00
For Your Attention
Canadian and US Courts have recently permitted class actions on behalf of authors to become certified and proceed against major publishers for copyright infringement where such authors’ work is made available by the publisher in other than the normal hard copy print format (in electronic format, for example), a development that is forcing major publishers to be more careful to secure additional rights from authors (and possibly forcing publishers to pay authors an increased price for works published).
In the recent Ontario case of Robertson v. Thompson Corp., a class action for copyright was filed against Thompson Corp., owner of the Globe & Mail newspaper, in respect of a class of independent authors who had submitted works for reproduction in the print edition of the Globe & Mail, and whose works were subsequently made available by the defendants in electronic
