IT and e commerce Briefing

Article by Mark Turner and Dominic Callaghan

Online reputation of UK businesses can be protected by UK Courts

In February we discussed the decision of the Australian High Court in Dow Jones v Gutnick. Gutnick, a businessman from Melbourne, Australia sued the US company Dow Jones over an allegedly defamatory magazine article. Dow Jones & Company publishes the Wall Street Journal and also operates www.wsj.com, a news website. The website allows subscribers and registered users to access a number of newspapers including the magazine where the article appeared. Gutnick successfully argued that the Australian Court has jurisdiction as he had suffered damage to his reputation in Australia. Gutnick also conducts business in the US and has contributed to charities in the US and Israel but the Court accepted that much of his business and social life was focused in Victoria, Australia.

In Harrods Limited v Dow Jones & Co Inc the UK High Court has reached the same conclusion in a case involving very similar facts. In the Harrods' case the defamatory article appeared in the US edition of the Wall Street Journal and on the US website www.wsj.com. The article did not appear in the European hard copy edition of the Wall Street Journal. Only 10 hard copies of the US edition were sent to subscribers in Europe out of a total US circulation of 1.8 million copies. There had only been a small number of hits on the website.

Justice Eady was asked to decide the preliminary issue of whether a UK court had jurisdiction. He acknowledged the limited amount of publication in England, but found that if a company or person has a reputation to protect in England, they have the right to seek to protect that reputation in England. He made it clear that UK law does not mirror the United States' 'single publication' rule. That rule provides that a defendant should only be sued in the place of the first publication of the defamatory material. English law recognises that publication can occur in many places. Each publication will be sufficient to found a separate cause of action.

The decision is a timely reminder to website owners that publication on the web may require consideration of the law in multiple countries.

Please click here for a copy of the decision in Harrods Limited v Dow Jones & Co Inc

EU approves FEDMA Direct Marketing Code

The EU Data Privacy Directive provides for the EU to approve community level codes of conduct drawn up by trade associations and other bodies representing categories of data controllers. The Codes are aimed at ensuring compliance with the Directive.

The European Federation of Direct Marketing (FEDMA) represents the direct marketing sector at the European level. Its national members are the Direct Marketing Associations of 12 countries of the European Union (all except Belgium, Luxembourg and Denmark) and Switzerland, Norway, Hungary, Poland, the Czech and Slovak Republics. The FEDMA code is designed primarily as an instrument of best practice. All the national members of FEDMA...