Authorship and fixation in copyright law : a comparative comment

[The present comment considers an issue that has received little discussion in the common law world: namely whether fixation and authorship are parts of the same creative act in relation to literary, dramatic and musical works. The importance of the question is that, if authorship does not entail fixation, it should logically be possible for a person independent of the author to reduce the work to material form for copyright purposes. This would significantly expand the range of works protected by copyright and would extend protection to those works which have never been fixed by their authors. The focus of the comment is Australian law, but its discussion is comparative, with particular attention given to UK law.]<br /

Representative actions, proof of fact and author identification in copyright law: a history and a concern

Recent judgments in Australia have called for author identification in order that copyright subsistence may be established. There is a risk that such calls will be taken too literally, to the detriment of author privacy. This article considers the legal mechanisms by which author identity has&nbsp;historically been shielded from disclosure, without the operation of the&nbsp;copyright system being impaired. It expresses the hope that those who are&nbsp;responsible for developing copyright law will be mindful of the concern for author privacy which has long been part of copyright discourse

Moral rights: a brief excursion into Canadian history

In 1931, Canada was the first of the copyright countries to adopt a moral rights provision, closely modeled on Article 6bis of the Berne Convention, into its legislation. But this was not the first step that Canada had taken towards the legislative protection of moral rights. Not only had certain provisions protective of the non-economic interests of authors been included in the federal Criminal Code and in the legislation of Quebec prior to 1920, but during the 1920s a sustained effort had been made to give these interests more explicit and systematic protection under the Copyright Act. The present article focuses on a series of bills put to the Canadian Parliament from 1924 onwards. Not only would they have provided increased protection for the non-economic interests of authors but they would have given a legislative definition to the term &quot;moral right&quot;. These bills, framed in the absence of any influence from Article 6bis, provide a glimpse of what &quot;moral rights&quot; might have been. They support the view that Canada was moving towards the express legislative protection of these rights significantly earlier that is commonly thought.<br /

COVID-19-associated hyperinflammation and escalation of patient care: a retrospective longitudinal cohort study.

BACKGROUND: A subset of patients with severe COVID-19 develop a hyperinflammatory syndrome, which might contribute to morbidity and mortality. This study explores a specific phenotype of COVID-19-associated hyperinflammation (COV-HI), and its associations with escalation of respiratory support and survival. METHODS: In this retrospective cohort study, we enrolled consecutive inpatients (aged ≥18 years) admitted to University College London Hospitals and Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals in the UK with PCR-confirmed COVID-19 during the first wave of community-acquired infection. Demographic data, laboratory tests, and clinical status were recorded from the day of admission until death or discharge, with a minimum follow-up time of 28 days. We defined COV-HI as a C-reactive protein concentration greater than 150 mg/L or doubling within 24 h from greater than 50 mg/L, or a ferritin concentration greater than 1500 μg/L. Respiratory support was categorised as oxygen only, non-invasive ventilation, and intubation. Initial and repeated measures of hyperinflammation were evaluated in relation to the next-day risk of death or need for escalation of respiratory support (as a combined endpoint), using a multi-level logistic regression model. FINDINGS: We included 269 patients admitted to one of the study hospitals between March 1 and March 31, 2020, among whom 178 (66%) were eligible for escalation of respiratory support and 91 (34%) patients were not eligible. Of the whole cohort, 90 (33%) patients met the COV-HI criteria at admission. Despite having a younger median age and lower median Charlson Comorbidity Index scores, a higher proportion of patients with COV-HI on admission died during follow-up (36 [40%] of 90 patients) compared with the patients without COV-HI on admission (46 [26%] of 179). Among the 178 patients who were eligible for full respiratory support, 65 (37%) met the definition for COV-HI at admission, and 67 (74%) of the 90 patients whose respiratory care was escalated met the criteria by the day of escalation. Meeting the COV-HI criteria was significantly associated with the risk of next-day escalation of respiratory support or death (hazard ratio 2·24 [95% CI 1·62-2·87]) after adjustment for age, sex, and comorbidity. INTERPRETATION: Associations between elevated inflammatory markers, escalation of respiratory support, and survival in people with COVID-19 indicate the existence of a high-risk inflammatory phenotype. COV-HI might be useful to stratify patient groups in trial design. FUNDING: None

Appropriation in the name of art: is a quotation exception the answer?

The Australian Law Reform Commission is at present considering the scope of exceptions to copyright infringement. Its consideration will no doubt be influenced to some degree by the outcome in EMI Songs Australia Pty Ltd v Larrikin Music Publishing Pty Ltd (2011) 191 FCR 444; (2011) 90 IPR 50 which concerned the quotation of a musical phrase in a later musical work. This article addresses the problem of creative appropriations and the extent to which a quotation exception, consistent with Art 10 of the Berne Convention, should be incorporated into Australian law. In doing so it considers the practical application of such a quotation exception in European jurisdictions (most notably Germany) and suggests the form in which such an exception might be incorporated into Australian law

Moral rights and substantiality: some questions of integration

Now that Australia has its long awaited legislation protecting the moral rights of authors, a new phase in the development of the rights begins. It must be asked how the incorporation of the rights into the existing copyright legislation, and their subjection to existing doctrines, will affect their operation. And how will existing doctrines be challenged and extended by the existence of the rights? Ultimately these questions will be worked out in the courts. The present article offers a consideration of one area where the legislature has purported to integrate moral rights into the existing scheme but where the practicalities oftheir integration are still unclear. It examines the interplay of moral rights with the doctrine of substantiality, suggesting that any clarification of what substantiality means in the moral rights context will be contingent upon the emergence of more precise definitions of what moral rights are and what interests they are intended to protect.<br /