On 1 April 2020, the Supreme Court of Appeal
("SCA") granted an appeal against an
order of Acting Justice Kose in the Cape Town High Court in favour
of The Agricultural Research Council (ARC) (Bergh and Others v The
Agricultural Research Council (Case no 93/2019) [2020] ZASCA
30).
The appeal was against an order interdicting the appellants from
infringing the ARC's copyright in the BeefPro computer program
and from unlawfully competing with the ARC.
At the heart of the matter was the question of which party owned
the copyright in the BeefPro program.
The matter is yet another example of unsuccessful litigation
being financed from public funds. It contains scathing comment on
AJ Kose's judgement and looks in some depth at the ownership of
copyright in computer programs and specifically the concept of
"control" as used in the Copyright Act 98 of 1978 (as
amended) (the "Act") to define
authorship.
