Walter v Lane
Walter v Lane [1900] AC 539, was a judgement of the House of Lords on the question of Authorship under the Copyright Act 1842.It has come to be recognised as a seminal case on the notion of originality in copyright law and has been upheld as an early example of the sweat of the brow doctrine.The question for the court was whether the reporters of the speech could be considered "authors" under the terms of the Copyright Act.For Lord Brampton, it was crucial that the "preparation [of the reports] involved considerable intellectual skill and brain labour beyond the mere mechanical operation of writing".[2] Lord Robertson, dissenting, compared the reporters to phonographs and found that there was no authorship even though there was much skill required.