| Keatley Surveying v Teranet | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Hearing: March 29, 2019 Judgment: September 26, 2019 | |
| Citations | 2019 SCC 43 |
| Prior history | Judgment for Teranet in the Ontario Court of Appeal. |
| Court membership | |
| Reasons given | |
| Majority | Abella J. |
| Concurrence | Côté and Brown JJ., joined by Wagner C.J. |
Keatley Surveying v Teranet is a judgment of the Supreme Court of Canada on issues of copyright, specifically Crown copyright, and intellectual property. [1] It was released in September 2019. [2]
The appellant brought a motion in 2007 to certify a class action on behalf of all land surveyors in Ontario who registered or deposited plans of survey in the provincial land registry offices. It claimed that the respondent, who as agent of the Crown, trespassed on the copyright of the land surveyors who had generated the work. The appellant failed to convince the trial judge, failed to sway the Court of Appeal, and failed to persuade the SCC of the rightness of its cause. The judges were very concerned about the public interest, and the clear public character of the works.
It is also important to note that this conclusion furthers the underlying purposes of Crown copyright. A key fact in this case is that registered and deposited plans of survey in the land registry system are intended to be relied upon by members of the public to determine property rights and obligations. It is for this very reason that the Crown decided to create a single, authoritative registry. These are precisely the types of works over which Crown copyright should subsist — those over which it is necessary for the Crown to guarantee authenticity, accuracy and integrity in the public interest.
The concurrence judgment, which begins at ¶92, hinged on the interpretation of section 12 of the Copyright Act.
As to the plans of survey at issue in this case, it is clear that they are government works to which s. 12, properly interpreted, applies. They have a clear public character, as they define and illustrate the legal boundaries of land within the Province. This information is of the highest public importance, clarifying land ownership, and allowing landowners and users to govern their affairs accordingly. Therefore, the works serve a public purpose within the Province. Crown copyright in this information is of similar importance. People rely on the accuracy of survey plans for determining their interest in property and facilitating land transactions. The Crown has a strong interest in the integrity of the land registry system and in public access to accurate versions of surveys.
Surveying or land surveying is the technique, profession, art and science of determining the terrestrial or three-dimensional positions of points and the distances and angles between them. A land surveying professional is called a land surveyor. These points are usually on the surface of the Earth, and they are often used to establish maps and boundaries for ownership, locations, such as building corners or the surface location of subsurface features, or other purposes required by government or civil law, such as property sales.
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Information Services Corporation (ISC) is a publicly traded Saskatchewan business corporation responsible for the development, management and administration of: registries – land titles, personal property, corporate and survey registries; geographic information; and access to government services for people and business.
Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp., 36 F. Supp. 2d 191, was a decision by the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, which ruled that exact photographic copies of public domain images could not be protected by copyright in the United States because the copies lack originality. Even though accurate reproductions might require a great deal of skill, experience and effort, the key element to determine whether a work is copyrightable under US law is originality.
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Cobbe v Yeoman's Row Management Ltd[2008] UKHL 55 is a House of Lords case in English land law and relates to proprietary estoppel in the multi-property developer context. The court of final appeal awarded the project manager £150,000 on a quantum meruit basis for unjust enrichment because Yeoman's Row had received the benefit of his services without paying for that. The court refused to find or acknowledge a binding contract, prior arrangement with a third party or promise, overturning a £2m award on the basis of a possible lien arising from a promise over the property. The court found a non-binding agreement in principle, entirely subject to the owner's final say to take into account for example their view of the market; this was the basis on the facts on which the parties were proceeding.
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