Thursday, December 16, 2010

Telstra loses appeal on phone directories case

The decision upheld a February Federal Court decision that copyright did not subsist in Telstra's White and Yellow Pages directories

The unanimous decision by Chief Justice Keane, Justice Perram and Justice Yates was delivered in three separate judgements, all in general agreement with Justice Gordon's first instance decision. Chief Justice Keane observed that "in my respectful opinion, the decision of the trial judge was correct". [95]

Chief Justice Keane holding that the White and Yellow Pages "were compiled, not by the individuals engaged to facilitate the process, but by a computerised process of storing, selecting, ordering and arranging the data to produce the directories in the form in which they were published."

Full decision available at http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/FCAFC/2010/149.html

Regards

Mark Bender

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Local telco's allegedly misleading and deceptive conduct

http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/optus-takes-vodafone-to-court-over-misleading-ads-20101214-18vq3.html

Seems that many commonplace forms of marketing conduct in that industry are questionable at best - one of the most outrageous must surely be the constant use of 'cap' and 'capped' - in relation to plans that do not have an upper limit.