Supreme Court Majority Applies Royalty Fees To Broadcast-Incidental Copies

The Supreme Court issued its decision on November 26, 2015 in CBC v SODRAC 2003 Inc. The majority decision, written by Justice Rothstein, allowed the appeal and remitted the Statutory Licence Decision to the Copyright Board for reconsideration of the valuation of broadcast-incidental copies in accordance with the principles of technological neutrality.

The case is an appeal from the Copyright Board's decision to impose royalty payments on the CBC for broad-cast-incidental copies, which are required to be made in the process of turning a television program into a broadcast. In 2012, the Copyright Board held that: (1) CBC's broadcast-incidental copying activity engaged the reproduction right; (2) that a licence for such copies could not be implied from synchronization licences covering the production process; and (3) that CBC required a separate reproduction licence to legitimize its broadcast-incidental copying. The Board issued the 2008-2012 licence and later issued an interim licence. The Board's decision was appealed to the Federal Court of Appeal. On appeal to the FCA, the main issue concerned whether the Board's statutory Licence...