Cases

Christoffer v Poseidon Film Distributors Ltd

Facts

The claimant wrote a script for a short animated film version of the story of the Cyclops from Homer’s Odyssey which he left with the defendant, a film production company, to consider whether it wanted to make the film. Without the claimant’s knowledge or consent the defendant made a television film from a screenplay adapted from the claimant’s script and agreed to supply it to a television company. When the claimant claimed an injunction and damages against the defendant, it alleged that one of the payments, namely £500, it had made to the claimant for other scripts he had produced for it was payment for his copyright in the script, that in any event the script was not protected by copyright because it was not an original literary work, being copied either from Homer’s work itself or from a children’s book and that in making the film it had not copied any or any substantial part of the claimant’s script.

Also