Screenplay collaborator granted authorship credit in IPEC ‘encore’
Daniela Simone · Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice · 2021
Martin v Kogan [2021] EWHC 24 (Ch), 11 January 2021 (Meade J) Following a retrial, the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court (IPEC) has held a screenplay collaborator to be entitled to a 20% joint authorship share. The IPEC had upheld Nicholas Martin’s claim to be the sole author of the screenplay for the film Florence Foster Jenkins in an initial decision in Martin v Kogan [2017] EWHC 2927 (IPEC), [2018] FSR 9 (Hacon HHJ). On appeal, a retrial was ordered with the trial judge criticized for failing to make crucial findings of fact and for errors of law in the application of copyright law’s joint authorship test: Kogan v Martin [2019] EWCA Civ 1645, [2020] FSR 3 (Floyd, Henderson, and Peter Jackson LLJ). A newly constituted IPEC has now found the screenplay to be a work of joint authorship with the contribution of Martin’s collaborator, Julia Kogan, assessed at 20...