Malta / Casos nacionales
Dr Louis Cassar Pullicino noe v NCT International Trading Limited, 535/2003/1
Casos nacionales. La inclusión en esta ficha no convierte una referencia extranjera en una decisión nacional. Se conserva el estado y el alcance de la fuente.
Expediente y fuentes
- Nombre
- Dr Louis Cassar Pullicino noe v NCT International Trading Limited, 535/2003/1
- Cita
- Court of Appeal (Civil, Superior), 3 December 2010
- Tribunal
- Court of Appeal (Civil, Superior), Malta
- Instancia
- apelación
- Fechas
- Decisión
- 2010-12-03
- Estado
- resuelto-firmeza-no-verificada
- Resultado
- The first ground was accepted only to clarify the form/content distinction; the appeal was otherwise dismissed, the first-instance judgment confirmed, and costs of both instances imposed on NCT.
- Resumen
- Maps were protected as artistic works only in their authorial form, not in the geographic facts. The evidence established extensive actual reproduction rather than independent creation.
- Antecedentes
- NCT marketed NaviCharT vector charts. The record compared them with Admiralty and CM93/2 charts and identified common spelling errors, contours, edits, clipping and merging. NCT invoked the program's interactivity and 'intelligenza artificjali' to argue independent creation.
- Historia procesal
- NCT appealed the Civil Court, First Hall judgment of 17 September 2008 that had upheld claims by HMSO/the UK Secretary of State for Defence concerning Admiralty Charts.
- Cuestión jurídica
- Whether geographic/topographic information or only the charts' expressive form was protected, and whether NaviCharT reproduced the whole or a qualitatively substantial part.
- Criterio
- Maps were protected as artistic works only in their authorial form, not in the geographic facts. The evidence established extensive actual reproduction rather than independent creation.
- Fundamento decisivo
- Copyright does not monopolise the underlying information. Identity of errors, contours and editorial treatment supplied qualitative evidence of copying; an invocation of software or AI did not rebut those factual correspondences.
- Límites
- Predates the full later CJEU originality line; concerns vector navigation charts, not generative output or prompts.
- Relevancia
- autoria-output
- Referencias relacionadas
- Peso del precedente
- High national authority for separating unprotectable facts or machine function from protectable expression and for evidence of copying. The AI phrase is a litigant's defence, not a holding on AI authorship. Integración/votación: Silvio Camilleri Joseph A. Filletti Geoffrey Valenzia Unanimous published panel judgment by Silvio Camilleri, Joseph A. Filletti and Geoffrey Valenzia; no dissent published.
- Fuente
- Referencia
- Dr Louis Cassar Pullicino noe v NCT International Trading Limited, 535/2003/1
- Enlace
- Consultar fuente
- Autoridad
- Court of Appeal (Civil, Superior), Malta
- Tipo
- national appellate copyright merits judgment on maps, protected form and substantial reproduction; contains an AI argument but is not a GenAI-authorship case
- Tipo de evidencia
- primary_judicial_fulltext_official
- Método de comprobación
- Official PDF and official metadata reviewed in full.
- Localizador
- pp. 1-3 (procedure); pp. 24-27 (form/content); pp. 29-38 (expert evidence, copying and disposition)
- Verificación documentada
- Sí