NEWSPAPER COPYRIGHT.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4475, 23 July 1875, Page 3

NEWSPAPER COPYRIGHT.

(From the Melbourne Daily Telegraph.) In the Melbourne Equity Court, on June 8 his Honor Mr. Justice Molesworth gave judgment in the suit of Wilson and others v. Luke, which was instituted to restrain the proprietors of the Gippsland Mercury from repxtblishing in that journal the European telegrams sent by Eeuter's telegraphic agency to the Australian Associated Press. His Honor, after reviewing the chief features of the case as they come before him in evidence, concluded as follows :—" The argument most urged by the defendant in this case is that there ia no property in unpublished news, so that there is nothing to protect before publication, but this appears to me to be a property from day to day acquired, which is habitually infringed as soon as r acquired with such speed that no effectual remedy could he found after the publication. If I were granting an injunction against diverting a running stream, I should be dealing as to water now in the clouds before it descends into rain, or if the injunction lasted longer, as to water now in the ocean before it ascends by evaporation. As to the arguments from Act 414, now expired, that its enactment shows that there was no remedy without it, the prohibition in that Act is more extensive than that which I am about to order, for it extends to publishing the intelligence, not merely copying the telegrams. The injunction sought in the notice of motion goes further in this respect than I think without the Act I should. I shall order that the defendant Henry Luke, his printer, publisher, agents, and servants, be restrained from printing or publishing as news from Melbourne, or in any other form, in the Gippsland Mercury newspaper, or otherwise, any copy or colorable alteration or adaptation in the nature of copies of any telegrams from England received and published by the plaintiffs until further order. That an injunction issue if necessary under the seal of the Court to give effect. Cost of application to be ia cause."