In New Zealand Television New Zealand v Newsmonitor Services Ltd124 concerned a
claim to authorship and copyright in the scripts of news programmes broadcast by the
plaintiff. In particular, the case focused on those parts of the scripts that reported the
words of third-party interviewees, almost invariably very short quotations (so-called
‘‘sound bites’’) from longer passages of speech. Although Blanchard J. purported to
follow Walter v Lane, Robinson v Sands & McDougall and Express Newspapers Plc v News
(UK) Ltd in upholding the plaintiff’s claim, again it is suggested that the level of skill
and judgment involved in the selection and compilation of the scripts was sufficient
to establish the orthodox level of originality required for literary copyright without
recourse to the principle in Walter v Lane.
Walter v Lane has also received judicial consideration in Canada and the United States.
In Hager v ECW Press Ltd (TD)125 the Canadian Federal Court held that an interviewer
was entitled to copyright in her records of interviews (including verbatim quotations
from the subject of the interviews). Reed J. expressly relied on Walter v Lane but, more
particularly, on Express Newspapers Plc v News (UK) Ltd, which he held to be applicable
to the circumstances of the present case126; and he declined to follow two US decisions
in which interviewers had been denied copyright in the recorded quotations of the
subjects of their interviews.127 Reed J. appears to come close to endorsing the ‘‘pure’’
principle in Walter v Lane, although his particular reliance on Express Newspapers Plc
v News (UK) Ltd may be interpreted as an endorsement subject to the element of skill
exercised by the interviewer in selecting material from the interviews.
In the United States, in Lipman v Commonwealth of Massachusetts128 the Court of
Appeals for the First Circuit expressly declined to follow Walter v Lane and refused to
recognise reporter’s copyright in the transcription of a judicial hearing on the ground
of lack of originality.