Fairfax, publisher of the Australian Financial Review, alleged that Reed had infringed copyright by copying AFR headlines as part of its media monitoring service. The question was whether headlines were “original literary works”.
Held, while it is possible that a particular headline or title could be a literary work, the general rule is that they are not.
“Headlines generally are, like titles, simply too insubstantial and too short to qualify for copyright protection as literary works. The function of the headline is as a title to the article as well as a brief statement of its subject, in a compressed form comparable in length to a book title or the like. It is, generally, too trivial to be a literary work, much as a logo was held to be too trivial to be an artistic work, even if skill and labour has been expended on creation.” (Bennett J, [44])
However, “It may be that evidence directed to a particular headline, or a title of so extensive and of such a significant character, could be sufficient to warrant a finding of copyright protection” ([46])