had been compiled by pulling numbers out of a hat. Ladbroke (Football) v Wm Hill [1964] 1 All ER 465 (HL) is a key case which sets out the basis on which such material is protected. Lord Reid said:

When the appellants decided to enter this field they had to devise a suitable form of coupon. Their manager who was given this task was formerly employed by the respondents, but it appears that he tried to devise a form of coupon substantially different from the respondents’ coupon. The coupons of some twenty other firms in the business were produced at the trial, and, while they have a general similarity, they vary very much in the nature of their lists and the variety of bets offered in respect of many of the lists. Most of them were studied by the appellants’ manager, but his proposals were rejected by the appellants’ managing director, who adopted a form closely similar to the respondents’ coupon. The respondents had 16 lists: the appellants’ coupon contains 15 of these lists, all of which appear in the same order as in the respondents’ coupon. Moreover, the varieties of bets offered by the appellants in each of these 15 lists are almost identical with the others by the respondents in their corresponding list. It is true that, with I think one exception, each of these lists is to be found in one or more of the other bookmakers’ coupons and some are to be found in most all of them. But the appellants do not suggest that the close resemblance between their coupon and the respondents’ coupon is fortuitous. They admit that a good deal was simply copied from the respondents, and they say that they were entitled to do that. By no means everything was copied. For some of the lists they devised new names or headings, and the learned trial judge has found that they worked out for themselves the hundred or more different odds offered in respect of the various kinds of bets. It was impossible to copy the selections of matches: the selections must be from the matches to take place in the following week, so

there would not be time for one bookmaker to copy from the coupon of another matter which alters every week.