Copyright in the Digital World: The Latest Word from the Supreme Court of Canada

The Supreme Court of Canada has recently ruled on a much anticipated copyright case, Robertson v. Thomson Corporation (unreported, October 12, 2006). The case involved the clash of the rights of copyright holders and the effect of the digitization of original works. In a close, 5-4 split decision, the Court ruled in favour of authors' individual copyright to control their work over the publishers' copyright to reproduce their collective work, that is their newspapers, in a different electronic commercial database format, “without compensation to the authors and without their consent.”