Can You Take Copyright To A Higher Level?

It is often said that copyright protects the expression of an idea, but not the idea itself.  The Court of Appeal applied this principle in deciding a recent copyright infringement action over computer games.

In Nova v Mazooma the claimant had developed a computer game based on the game of pool.  The defendants had each developed other pool-themed games which, the claimant alleged, infringed the copyright in its computer game.

There was no suggestion that the defendants had had access to, or had copied, the source code of the claimant's game.  Instead the claimant relied on copyright subsisting in the bitmap graphics and frames generated and displayed to the user and copyright in the design notes for the game and the computer program implementing it.  The Court of Appeal held against the claimant on both grounds, in part for the following reasons: