Recent Cases

Nova Productions v Mazooma Games

The Court of Appeal dismissed an appeal against a finding of non-infringement of copyright in the field of computer game design
The claimant was a company designing computer games, in particular one known as “Pocket Money” which simulated a game of pool.  The defendants produced their own games involving playing pool which were reminiscent of the claimant’s game and used some of the same game play devices.  The claimant alleged infringement of various copyrights including artistic works, literary works in the coding, dramatic works in the game scenes and a film. The claimant accepted that no individual frame of their game or line of code had been directly copied.  The judge rejected the claim based on a dramatic work and held that none of the literary or artistic works relied upon had been reproduced, albeit ideas present in the artistic works had been reproduced in the defendants’ games. 
The Court of Appeal rejected the appeal, upholding the judge.  Each frame was to be regarded as a separate graphic work and thus, if no frame had been copied, a resemblance between sequences of frames was not an infringement.  It was legitimate to emulate the functionality of a program, provided none of the code was copied.