Powerflex Services Pty Ltd v Data Access Corporation

Powerflex Services Pty Ltd and others (appellants) appeal against the decision of a judge of the Federal Court of Australia finding them to have infringed the copyright of Data Access Corporation (respondent) in a computer program known commercially as the Dataflex program. Data Access cross-appeals against the dismissal of its claim in respect of the error text table. The appellants argue that the learned primary judge misapplied the law in finding that the appellants had infringed copyright in the Dataflex program. The central issue in the appeal is whether either individually or collectively certain commands used in the Dataflex program, referred to as the Dataflex "language", are given copyright protection so that use of them as commands in the PFXplus program would constitute an infringement of the respondent's copyright in the Dataflex program. The Court found that the individual commands were not themselves expressions of a set of instructions, although they were triggers for the set of instructions to be given effect to by the computer. The Court found that the Huffman compression table was capable of being the subject of copyright, not as a computer program itself but as a table or compilation, and that Powerflex had reproduced the Huffman table in the Dataflex program and thus constituted an infringement. The Court found that the error text table was not the linchpin of the program, since the program could function with or without the error table, and that the similarity in the error text of each program was in number and idea, rather than expression. The appeal was allowed in part. The orders of the primary judge were set aside and in lieu thereof it was ordered that each of the appellants, other than the fourth appellant, be restrained from reproducing in a material form or making an adaptation of the Dataflex Huffman compression table, or a substantial part of that table, in either of the computer programs known as Powerflex or PFXplus, or an adaptation of those programs. The matter was remitted to a judge of the Court for determination by way of rehearing whether injunctions should be granted against the fourth appellant in the same terms as the injunctions now granted against the other appellants. The cross appeal was dismissed.