Intellectual Property Law in UK Law

It depends on the broad principle of equity that he who has received information in confidence shall not take unfair advantage of it. He must not make use of it to the prejudice of him who gave it without obtaining his consent. He should go to the public source and get it: or, at any rate, not be in a better position than if he had gone to the public source. He should not get a start over others by using the information which he received in confidence.

His expressed findings are always surrounded by a penumbra of imprecision as to emphasis, relative weight, minor qualification and nuance ( as Renan said, la v�rit� est dans une nuance), of which time and language do not permit exact expression, but which may play an important part in the judge's overall evaluation.

There is in my opinion no question of creating an "image right" or any other unorthodox form of intellectual property. The information in this case was capable of being protected, not because it concerned the Douglases' image any more than because it concerned their private life, but simply because it was information of commercial value over which the Douglases had sufficient control to enable them to impose an obligation of confidence.

For instance, a newspaper or television company might be willing to pay a large sum to the promoter of some important sporting event for the "exclusive" right to all motion pictures and photographs of the event, and it might go to great lengths to publicise its exclusive right (partly to attract custom, and partly in the hope of engaging the law of confidence).

I confess to having some difficulty in understanding what this has to do with the law of intellectual property. Parliament has devised ways in which an author, inventor or creator can continue to profit from his creativity long after the product has passed into the public domain. Although in both cases the subject matter can be called information, one set of remedies is about rewarding its creator, the other about keeping it quiet. Parliament has intervened in the former but not the latter.

There are no issues of policy which militate against the enforcement of foreign copyright. States have an interest in the international recognition and enforcement of their copyrights, as the Berne Convention on the International Union for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works shows.

On the other hand, in one sense it has always been possible to call into question both the validity and the scope of a foreign intellectual property right. For instance, where the defendant has agreed to pay royalties to the claimant on any product covered by a valid claim of a foreign patent and the agreement is governed by English law and confers jurisdiction upon the English courts.