Pro Arts, Inc v. Campus Crafts Holdings Ltd.
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party and the court can order a halt to the
unauthorized reproduction and distribution,
and also that the unauthorized copies be
destroyed. The court can award damages
to the copyright owner, and it can order
the infringing party to account to the
copyright owner for profits realized by way
of the infringement. Infringement of
copyright is also a criminal offence and is
punishable by a fine or a short jail term in
the case of second and subsequent
offences. [See the following Law in
Action column for an example of
copyright infringement.]
The Copyright Act came into force in
1924, obviously predating such devel-
opments as videotape, cable television,
satellite TV broadcasting, photocopiers,
and electronic information and retrieval
systems. Even though the Act has been
amended several times since 1924, it is
still felt that it is somewhat dated.
Because of this, officials in the federal
Communications Department and the
federal Department of Consumer and
Corporate Affairs have been asked to draft
new copyright legislation. It is likely that
this will appear sometime in 1982. U
Law in Action
Pro Arts, Inc. v. Campus Crafts Holdings Ltd.
by: Margaret Ferguson
Both the camera and the photocopy
machine make it very easy to copy.
Therefore, materials which are the subject
of copyright, such as books, articles,
photographs, poems, and musical scores,
may be reproduced with relative ease. For
those people who are not using such copies
for private study, but nevertheless feel
such infringement is worth the risk, let the
following 1980 decision of the Ontario High
Court of Justice be fair warning.
Facts
The Plaintiff, Pro Arts, Inc., is a U. S.
corporation which manufactures and sells
posters. In 1976 the Plaintiff made an
agreement with Farrah Fawcett-Majors
allowing it to manufacture, sell, and
distribute a poster of Farrah (as she is
referred to in the case report). Farrah
began appearing in the popular television
series Charlie's Angels soon after the
poster was introduced on the market, and
it was not long before sales soared.
Eventually over four million copies were
sold, making it the best selling poster of all
time.
The Defendant, Campus Crafts Holdings
Ltd., an Alberta corporation with its head
office in Edmonton, was at this time the
largest manufacturer and distributor of
posters in Canada. In January, 1977, the
Defendant produced a counterfeit Farrah
poster using a process which involved
photographing the Plaintiff's poster and
carefully blocking from the negatives the
notice of copyright. These counterfeit
posters were then distributed to retail
stores throughout Canada.
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Pro Arts, Inc v. Campus Crafts Holdings Ltd.
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