BBC Worldwide Limited v Pally Screen Printing Limited

Date

26 January 1998

Legislation

Keywords

Counsel

J. Baldwin QC, John Fitzgerald

Solicitors

unknown

Judge

Laddie J.

Court

High Court (Chancery Division)

Reported

[1998] FSR 665

Summary

Commonly known as the 'Teletubbies' case. Application for summary judgment by the BBC against the defendants who were a screen printing company which had printed numerous T-shirts featuring images of the Teletubbies.

Applying the test for summary judgment Laddie dismissed the application on the following grounds: the BBC had not obtained copyright assignments from each of the artists who designed the Teletubbies and was arguably thus the wrong claimant (the copyright would vest in the original 'author' of the drawings unless otherwise assigned); the defendant also had an arguable defence under s51(1) Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 on the basis that the t-shirts were indirect copies of three dimensional articles that were not works of artistic craftsmanship; in connection with passing off it was arguable that members of the public would consider the t-shirts to be simply t-shirts bearing images of the Teletubbies without any regard to whether they were put out by the BBC or with its permission.

Decision

Laddie J. did, however, hold that some of the artwork appearing on the t-shirts did constitute reproduction of a substantial part of the one of the BBC's pieces of artwork.

See also the decision of the Court of Appeal in Irvine v Talksport ([2003] 2 All ER 881 and [2003] FSR 35) in connection with the related topic of passing off and product endorsement.

Reviewed 30 November 2008