|
 The following musings of Dr David Treharne, former chairman of Exeter City Football Club, have been reproduced from the Exeter City v Stockport County matchday programme from 11 November 2006 with kind permission of Dr Treharne (pictured right, and below with Rachael Church-Sanders, Editor of Sport and Technology).
The snappy title ‘Copyright, patents and intellectual ownership’ might have been enough to put many people off spending an hour being guided in layperson terms through those topics by somebody from the Copyright Office in Newport, Gwent. (Incidentally, did you know that Consignia, as it then was, stopped Newport Borough Council (as it was then) from using the postal franking ‘Newport Gwent, Home of the Mole Wrench’ because it was a trademark, and changed it to ‘Newport Gwent, Home of the self-gripping wrench’. I swear this is true!
I was attracted to the meeting because I have a much quoted publication that is coming to the end of its copyright period, and want to ensure that I continue to get at least acknowledgement from those who quote from it. Also I wish to avoid in future any question about my ‘right to be identified as the author of this work.’
My friend Stuart was so pleased to be asked to write ‘A bluffers guide to economics’ that he signed away his copyright for what turned out to be a paltry sum. Recently, a friend of his bought a copy of the book in Jakarta, and since he was in publishing and knew what reprint runs and profits would be, estimated that if Stuart had been able to retain his copyright he’d be well on his way to being a millionaire!
To say that the whole area is a minefield is an understatement. I had been given some idea about the complexities at Sport and Technology: The Conference 2006, but to have a series of experts in each of the areas define the defining features, and then to hear somebody talk about ‘enforceability’ brought home to me how great was the need, even for a club like Exeter City, to do something about creating some sort of ‘shell’ to protect those images and articles which are still available to us.
It is amazing how little of what might have been secured actually has been. At the moment, probably because of the proposed expansion of G3 imaging for compression into downloadable pictures, a lot of the focus is on moving images. It’s also strange but true that a lot of the famous moving images are associated with the commentary that went with them. In many cases, it seems, the individual broadcaster has copyrighted the copyright on the commentary, and if you want to use the ‘clip’ as it was, you have to buy into that as well. The copyright question  Even looking for opportunities to expand into what could be useful domain names reveals how much has already been taken/allocated/snaffled by organisations that have nothing at all to do with Exeter City FC. Other football [soccer] clubs, and not always ones as ‘large’ as Exeter City have been much more proactive in protecting their copyright images and history.
It’s not only moving images and domain names that are being sought after, as Exeter City Football Club has found to its recent disadvantage. To take a slightly older brand name that could/should have been copyrighted or protected, there was a set of garments, which were protected under the logo ‘The Grecian Collection’. Great, except the copyright appears to have lapsed and is now ‘owned’ by somebody else. Nor, I suspect, given the recent history of the Club, is anyone actively pursuing what ought to be potentially valuable patents and copyrights to own.
I don’t want to go too deeply into this topic as far as Exeter City are concerned simply because having learned something of how simple (if relatively time consuming, tedious and protracted) the process is, I’ve spent some time in the office, and taken the liberty of ‘copyrighting’ a few items on behalf of the Supporters Trust that may well appear in the future as part of a set of fundraising schemes for it.
Of course, what the talk wasn’t able to do was explain how the law attempts to keep up with technological development in other areas. The most obvious one is to do with the ‘altering’ of images. Even with my quite rudimentary computing skills, I appear to have three programmes installed on my computer that makes the altering of basic images extremely simple. Thus Adobe Photoshop, Corel Paint Shop Pro, and my current favourite Roxio Photo Suite all make it possible to, for example, slip an unexpected individual into team line-ups, pose them against unexpected backdrops and fuse together (and even resize) two different photographs taken in different locations at different times. Where does the copyright reside with such images? I didn’t have time to ask!
Looking ahead  Finally, why might this matter to Exeter City Football Club anyway? Well, the fact of the matter is that the Government has instigated, initially through the Gowers review, an overview of all matters to do with Intellectual Ownership and Copyright. The first focus has been music copyright, and if early ‘leaked’ reports are confirmed then the existing rights will be extended from the current 50 to 95 years.
The intention is then to move from music to other forms of copyright, with images very much a focus in the next tranche of review. Were this to be instigated it could well be that unless the Club presses some of its claims to have the copyright of certain images, pictures and moving images, it might mean that to use them legally it would have to pay any copyright holder royalties for almost as long as the club has already been in existence.
One final uncomfortable thought being grappled with by copyrighters is if an image appears in an analogue form, and has a copyright on it, if it is turned ‘unaltered’ into a digital image, can the same copyright be applied or do the intellectual rights to use them reside with the person who created the digital image? There already seem more questions than answers.
This article was seen first by people who receive the monthly newsletter, join them.
|
