ABSTRACT
If these grids and these sequences of [five] letters can be said to be copyright works, I do not understand it to be argued on the defendants’ side that what they have done would not be an infringement. The defendants, however, say that there is here disclosed no copyright work. The Copyright Act 1956 provides for the giving of protection under the Act in respect of a variety of works. The only relevant heading so far as the present proceedings are concerned is ‘literary works’. By the definition section, ‘literary work’ includes tables; and it was not suggested by Mr Jeffs, on the defendant’s side, that a table could not be the subject of protection. It is of course accepted, because it is easily established by reference to one of a number of well-known authorities, that mathematical tables can acquire copyright protection as ‘literary work’. They do so because their compilation – and compilations in themselves are by definition ‘literary work’ – involves the exercise of skill and labour, or possibly maybe only labour.
