Overview

A recent case Primary Health Care Ltd v Commissioner of Taxation [2010]  FCA 419 highlighted the importance of “independent intellectual effort” in copyright cases.

Facts

The beneficial owner of a trust, the applicant, purchased certain medical and dental practices on behalf of the trust. The applicant alleged to obtain the copyrights interest as part of the purchase of practices, which fell under computable income and as such was allowed for tax deductions from the net revenue of the trust. In this case, Copyright was claimed for the following:

• Prescriptions
• Health summaries
• Referral letters
• Consultation notes of the acquired medical and dental practices.

Findings

It was noted by Justice Stone that for a medical record to qualify as literary work it should contain some individual intellectual effort and so could copyright exist. All medical records that were claimed for copyrights were assessed by Justice Stoneas follows:

Consultation notes that had only one author was considered continuous narrative, which displayed independent intellectual effort and so was qualifying for copyright protection. However, the consultation notes that had multiple authors were restricted.

Prescription consisted only of the names of medications, dosage and standard directions therefore was not qualified for copyright protection and also health summaries that had a list of previous illnesses and actions were restricted.

The referral letters contained intellectual independent effect and content were driven by the purpose of the letters so it qualified for copyright protection.

Outcome

Justice Stone found that in medical records like prescriptions, health summaries, referral letters and consultation notes do not involuntarily attract copyrights. So she determined that such records should be examined on a case by case basis which also displays the level of independent intellectual effort that would justify classifying the record as an original literary workfor the purposes of the Copyright Act 1968.