Supreme Court Of Canada To Hear Another Technological Neutrality Case

The Supreme Court of Canada announced today that it has granted leave to appeal to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation et al. from the Federal Court of Appeal (FCA) in the copyright case Canadian Broadcasting Corporation v. SODRAC, 2014 FCA 84, in which the FCA upheld SODRAC's royalty on ephemeral copies made during the course of production. The dispute centres on whether the CBC and other broadcasters must pay a royalty for ephemeral recordings made solely for the facilitating the broadcast of the performance or whether the concept of technological neutrality allows them to do so without triggering the royalty.

The Society for Reproduction Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers in Canada (SODRAC) is a collective society responsible for the administration of reproduction rights in Canada. They applied to the Canadian Copyright Board to set the terms of reproduction licenses for 2008-2012 after negotiations with the two broadcasters disintegrated. The CBC and Astral had both wanted a through-to-the-viewer license which authorizes all necessary rights for downstream users, within the temporal or geographical limits of the...