South African football league nets copyright victory
South African football’s top division is celebrating after a judge ruled that it can use copyright to protect and enforce its fixture lists.
The Premier Soccer League (PSL) has published weekly and annual fixture lists since 2007.
Soon after, the national lottery operator Gidani began reproducing the PSL’s fixtures for its football-based game, Sport Stake. Gamblers are required to predict the outcome of 12 pre-determined games drawn from the list.
Sport Stake is available online and at petrol stations and retail stores in South Africa.
In a 2008 demand letter, the PSL accused Gidani of unlawfully reproducing the lists and ordered it to stop reproducing them.
Gidani responded by claiming that the lists cannot be protected by copyright.
The PSL took legal action at the High Court of South Africa, based in Johannesburg. Judge Frans Kgomo, who ruled on the case on February 28, was left to decide whether the lists are copyrightable and, if so, whether they had been infringed by Gidani.
After discussing the lists’ originality in detail, Kgomo found that they are original and therefore protected by copyright under section six of the Copyright Act.
“After analysing all arguments and submissions from both sides ... it is my considered view and finding that the plaintiff should succeed in its claim,” said the judge.
Kgomo ordered Gidani to hand over any copies of the lists and to pay court costs.
The judge relied partly on a case from 1959 called Football League Ltd v Littlewoods Pools Ltd. There, a UK judge held that Littlewoods’ pools lists, used for betting on the results of football matches, had infringed the copyright in the Football League’s fixture lists.
In 2012, the Court of Justice of the European Union reversed that position, ruling that football lists are not protected by copyright.
But Kgomo said that because South Africa is not affected by EU law, and the country’s IP laws are based on the UK’s, the 1959 decision is still based on “good law”.
Werksmans Attorneys represented the PSL, while Spoor & Fisher Attorneys acted for Gidani. Neither responded immediately to a request for comment.
There are 16 teams in the PSL, with Chiefs leading the standings.
