Cases

Allason v Random House UK Limited

Held

Finding for Random House, Mr. Allason’s claim had changed or been refined over time. He first argued that he was the ghost writer, the sole author of the manuscript and that it was not a work of joint authorship. However, on discovering that computer disks containing the manuscript existed at a date prior to the date upon which Mr. Allason had claimed to have started to produce the manuscript, his case changed and he put forward an alternative case that he was the joint author of the work and John Cairncross assigned his interest in the copyright to him. The judge agreed with Random House that these two versions of events were inconsistent with each other. The judge found that the first argument was hopeless. As far as the second was concerned, it was clear that only, at most, 5% or so of the text was identified as coming from Mr. Allason and it was, in the main, not discrete blocks of text but consisted of scattered words.

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