Wade and Another v British Sky Broadcasting Ltd
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Lord Justice Briggs,Lord Justice Floyd,Lord Justice Christopher Clarke |
| Judgment Date | 01 December 2016 |
| Neutral Citation | [2016] EWCA Civ 1214 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Civil Division) |
| Docket Number | Case No: A3/2014/1401 |
| Date | 01 December 2016 |
[2016] EWCA Civ 1214
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)
ON APPEAL FROM CHANCERY DIVISION
Mr Justice Birss
HC12A02971
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL
Lord Justice Briggs
Lord Justice Floyd
and
Lord Justice Christopher Clarke
Case No: A3/2014/1401
Ms Christina Michalos (instructed by Payne Hicks Beach) for the Appellants
Mr John Baldwin QC and Ms Lindsay Lane (instructed by Charles Russell Speechlys) for the Respondents
Hearing date: 22 November 2016
Approved Judgment
This appeal arises out of an unsuccessful claim for mis-use of confidential information. The claim was brought by the co-creators and promoters of a proposed television talent show who believe that the gist of their innovative format was copied by the defendant British Sky Broadcasting Limited ("Sky") in order to produce a television programme which, although differently named, was suspiciously similar to their own. They allege that the appearance of a combination of original features in both formats, coupled with the short time between their pitch of their format to Sky, and the later televising of its talent show, raises the irresistible inference that, consciously or unconsciously, the key features of their format were misused by being copied, without their consent, by Sky.
By contrast with the law relating to private confidences, which has been transformed by the influence of the Human Rights Convention, the law relating to mis-use of confidential information in a business context has been well settled for very many years. The following well-known dictum of Megarry J in Coco v A N Clark (Engineers) Limited [1969] RPC 41, at 47 has stood the test of time:
"In my judgment, three elements are normally required if, apart from contract, a case of breach of confidence is to succeed. First, the information itself … must "have the necessary quality of confidence about it." Secondly, that information must have been imparted in circumstances importing an obligation of confidence. Thirdly, there must be an unauthorised use of that information to the detriment of the party communicating it."
The law as to the burden of proof in a claim of this kind is also well settled. It derives from the law relating to breach of copyright. Although the legal burden rests on the claimants throughout, the evidential burden may shift to the defendant where the claimants demonstrate sufficient similarities between their work and the defendant's work, coupled with a sufficient opportunity for the defendant to copy their work, to raise an inference that copying actually took place. The defendant may then seek to rebut that inference by evidence which proves independent derivation. The same principles are equally applicable to misuse of confidential information where, as here, the allegation is that confidential information consisting of original aspects of the claimants' format have been misused by being incorporated in the defendant's format without their consent.
It is also well settled that misuse in the form of copying of this kind need not always be conscious or deliberate. The defendant or its staff may be shown to have learned of the relevant features of the claimants' format, and then to have been prompted in the creation of its own format by the presence of those derived features in their sub-conscious memory: see for example Talbot v General Television Corporation PTY Limited [1981] RPC 1, per Harris J at 11, a decision of the Supreme Court of Victoria on rather similar facts.
The law is less clear about the analysis which is called for when (a) no single feature of the claimants' format alleged to have been misused by copying has, on its own, the necessary quality of confidence about it; (b) the claimants' format is as a whole of confidential quality but is not copied, lock stock and barrel, by the defendant; but (c) a combination of features of the claimants' format is copied by the defendant which are alleged to have the necessary quality of confidence about them, in the aggregate, but where the two formats, viewed as a whole, have important differences between them. As will shortly appear, this difficulty was not one which the trial judge found it necessary to resolve, and nor do I.
After a four day trial in the Chancery Division, Birss J dismissed the claim. He found that there was a sufficient basis in the existence of a combination of similar features between the two talent shows and the time-line between the claimants' communication of theirs to the defendant and its production of its own show to justify an inference, although not a very powerful inference, sufficient to transfer the evidential burden of proof to Sky. But he found that the detailed evidential proof, by documents and witnesses deployed by Sky, demonstrated that its show, including the combination of similar elements, had been created independently, without either deliberate or sub-conscious copying. The claimants therefore failed to satisfy Megarry J's third condition in Coco v Clark. As to the question whether the claimants' format had the necessary quality of confidence about it, the judge concluded that the show in its totality did so, but that none of the individual elements relied upon did so, viewed separately. It was not alleged that the claimants' format had been copied lock, stock and barrel by Sky. Since he had concluded that Sky's show was independently created, without copying of any ideas from the claimants' format, he found it unnecessary to decide whether the alleged combination of similar features satisfied Megarry J's first condition.
In concise and well-focussed submissions for the claimants Ms Christina Michalos (who did not appear below) pursued three main themes drawn from rather extensive grounds of appeal. First, she submitted that the judge's analysis was vitiated by errors of law. He had failed to approach the issues in the right order. He should have concentrated on the alleged combination of common factors between the two shows and decided whether it had the necessary quality of confidence, rather than looking at individual factors separately. He should have carried out a detailed chronological analysis of the development of the defendant's show and, in particular, the changes in its format by which it converged with features of the claimants' show. Had he done so he would have concluded that the inference of copying was overwhelming.
Secondly, she submitted that the judge had failed to apply the civil burden of proof, by assuming that the claimants needed to deploy "strong evidence" to displace the defendant's case of independent creation.
Finally, she advanced a number of specific submissions about the detail of the judge's analysis under the common heading that inferential findings which he made were wrong.
In conclusion she submitted that if any of her three themes were made good, there could in reality be no alternative outcome than a re-trial.
Mr John Baldwin QC and Ms Lindsay Lane for Sky resisted all those submissions. Pursuant to a Respondent's Notice, they submitted in addition first that the judge should have grappled with the question whether the alleged combination of copied features had the necessary quality of confidence about it, and concluded that it did not. Secondly they submitted that the claimants' case of deliberate or sub-conscious copying had not been properly put to Sky's witnesses in cross examination. It was no excuse that, having rejected an open offer of settlement, the claimants had lost their legal representation shortly before trial, and continued as litigants in person.
These submissions and counter-submissions do not mask the reality of this appeal, which is that it is essentially about a finding of fact, namely that the defendant did not actually use the claimants' information in the production of its show, whether or not, in combination, the similar features had the necessary quality of confidence about them. This court is therefore constrained by well known principles about the approach to factual appeals. They are sufficiently summarised by Lewison LJ in the following passage from Fine & Country Limited v Okotoks Limited [2013] EWCA Civ 672, at paragraphs 50–53, under the heading "the role of the appeal court":
"50. The Court of Appeal is not here to retry the case. Our function is to review the judgment and order of the trial judge to see if it is wrong. If the judge has applied the wrong legal test, then it is our duty to say so. But in many cases the appellant's complaint is not that the judge has misdirected himself in law, but that he has incorrectly applied the right test. In the case of many of the grounds of appeal this is the position here. Many of the points which the judge was called upon to decide were essentially value judgments, or what in the current jargon are called multi-factorial assessments. An appeal court must be especially cautious about interfering with a trial judge's decisions of this kind. There are many examples of statements to this effect. I take as representative Lord Hoffmann's statement in Designers Guild Ltd v Russell Williams (Textiles) Ltd [2000] 1 WLR 2416, 2423:
"Secondly, because the decision involves the application of a not altogether precise legal standard to a combination of features of varying importance, I think that this falls within the class of case in which an appellate court should not reverse a judge's decision unless he has erred in principle."
51. Where the appeal is (or involves) an appeal against a finding of fact, the role of an appeal court is as stated by Lord Mance in Datec Electronics Holdings Ltd v United Parcels Service Ltd [2007] UKHL 23 [2007] 1 WLR 1325 at [46] approving a passage from the judgment of...
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