“My original complaint to the University was an allegation of plagiarism against a member of staff in the School of Education, Dr Paul Warmington. I believe that an article published in the journal, "Race, Ethnicity and Education" authored by him and entitled "A tradition in ceaseless motion: critical race theory and black intellectual spaces”, published online in January 2012, bears an extremely close resemblance to the original ideas and work that I had submitted towards my PhD thesis to my supervisors between 2007 - 2011. I also raised an additional concern that Dr Warmington had submitted a book proposal to Routledge publishers which I believe substantively bears an almost identical outline and content to my work related to the black British activism in education the 1960s onwards. … the theoretical framework, the use of sources and the substantive ideas that appear in the draft thesis and completed thesis that I submitted in December 2011 are almost identical to the article written by Dr Warmington and are outlined in the book proposal submitted by him to Routledge publishers. I've also been previously concerned that original work/draft chapters that I submitted to my supervisors towards my thesis had been reworked by them in two articles that were later published in journals. These include [the Myers and Grosvenor/Myers Articles]. I was not invited to contribute to his articles and my original work, although unpublished, was not acknowledged in the list of references or elsewhere. … I did not want to and was not able to raise my concerns with my previous supervisors regarding my concerns of the plagiarism of my work …”
“24.2 The court may give summary judgment against a claimant or defendant on the whole of a claim or on a particular issue if— (a) it considers that— (i) that claimant has no real prospect of succeeding on the claim or issue; or (ii) that defendant has no real prospect of successfully defending the claim or issue; and (b) there is no other compelling reason why the case or issue should be disposed of at a trial.”
"3 … Our task is not to decide whether the claimants are right. Our task is to decide which parts of the case (if any) are fit to go to trial. If I may repeat something I have said before (Easyair Ltd v Opal Telecom Ltd[2009] EWHC 339 (Ch) , approved by this court in AC Ward & Son v Catlin (Five) Ltd[2009] EWCA Civ 1098 ): "
"…where the court holds that there is a defect in a pleading, it is normal for the court to refrain from striking out that pleading unless the court has given the party concerned an opportunity of putting right the defect, provided that there is reason to believe that he will be in a position to put the defect right."
“27 Under Article 2(a) of Directive 2001/29, Member States are required to provide that authors have the exclusive right to authorise or prohibit reproduction of their works. 28 The term 'work' referred to by that provision is also to be found in Article 3(1) and Article 4(1) of Directive 2001/29, on the exclusive rights granted to the author of a work with respect to its communication to the public and its distribution, and in Articles 5, 6 and 7 of that directive, the first of those provisions concerning the exceptions or limitations that may be applied to those exclusive rights, and the latter two provisions concerning the technological measures and information measures that ensure the protection of those exclusive rights. 29 The concept of 'work' that is the subject of all those provisions constitutes, as is clear from the Court's settled case-law, an autonomous concept of EU law which must be interpreted and applied uniformly, requiring two cumulative conditions to be satisfied. First, that concept entails that there exist an original subject matter, in the sense of being the author's own intellectual creation. Second, classification as a work is reserved to the elements that arethe expression of such creation (see, to that effect, judgments of16 July 2009 , Infopaq International, C-5/08, EU:C:2009:465, paragraphs 37 and 39, and of13 November 2018 , Levola Hengelo, C-310/17, EU:C:2018:899, paragraphs 33 and 35 to 37 and the case-law cited).”
“Copyright, of course, does not subsist in mere ideas, but in their expression. That proposition is a well-established one in English law, and is now also to be found in a number of international treaties and EU Directives: see art.9(2) of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (“TRIPs”) and art.2 of the WIPO Copyright Treaty. The ideas/expression dichotomy has, however, been described as “notoriously slippery” …”
“(1) What are the similarities between the alleged infringing work and the original copyright work? Unless similarities exist, there is no arguable case of copying and an allegation of infringement should never get as far as legal proceedings, let alone a trial. The 1988 Act confers on the owner the exclusive right “to copy the work” either directly or indirectly (s.16). This is not an exclusive right to prevent the publication of a work on a similar subject or a work which happens to contain similar material, thematic or otherwise. … (3) Did the author of the alleged infringing work make some use in his work of material derived by him, directly or indirectly, from the original work? (4) If the defendant contends that no such use was made, what is his explanation for the similarities between the alleged infringing work and the original copyright work? Are they, for example, coincidental? Or are they explained by the use of similar sources? If the latter, what are the common sources which explain the similarities? How were the sources used by the authors of the respective works? (5) If, however, use was made of the original copyright work in producing the alleged infringing work, did it amount, in all the circumstances, to “a substantial part” of the original work? The acts restricted by the copyright in a literary work are to the doing of them “in relation to the work as a whole or any substantial part of it”
“145. It is more sensible to ask whether there exist in this case the necessary and sufficient conditions for characterising the parts copied from the original work as “a substantial part” of the original work. The decided cases help in identifying the relevant necessary and sufficient conditions for substantiality. Thus, it is not necessary for the actual language of the copyright work to be copied or even for similar words to be used tracking, like a translation, the language of the copyright work. It is sufficient to establish that there has been substantial copying of the original collection, selection, arrangement, and structure of literary material, even of material that is not in itself the subject of copyright. 146 It is not, however, sufficient for the alleged infringing work simply to replicate or use items of information, facts, ideas, theories, arguments, themes and so on derived from the original copyright work. … 155 Of course, it takes time, effort and skill to conduct historical research, to collect materials for a book, to decide what facts are established by the evidence and to formulate arguments, theories, hypotheses, propositions and conclusions. It does not, however, follow, as suggested in the claimants' submissions, that the use of items of information, fact and so on derived from the assembled material is, in itself, “a substantial part” of HBHG simply because it has taken time skill and effort to carry out the necessary research. 156 The literary copyright exists in HBHG by reason of the skill and labour expended by the claimants in the original composition and production of it and the original manner or form of expression of the results of their research. Original expression includes not only the language in which the work is composed but also the original selection, arrangement and compilation of the raw research material. It does not, however, extend to clothing information, facts, ideas, theories and themes with exclusive property rights, so as to enable the claimants to monopolise historical research or knowledge and prevent the legitimate use of historical and biographical material, theories propounded, general arguments deployed, or general hypotheses suggested (whether they are sound or not) or general themes written about.”
“In my judgment, three elements are normally required if, apart from contract, a case of breach of confidence is to succeed. First, the information itself … must “have the necessary quality of confidence about it.”
“It is a commonplace that valuable and novel ideas may be produced by the judicious selection and combination of a number of items which, separately, are in the public domain. No one would suggest that such ideas are incapable of being the subject of an obligation of confidence. But, to adopt Megarry J.'s words, there must be some product of the skill of the human brain. A mere non-selective list of publicly available information should not be treated as confidential even if putting it together involves some time and effort. No relevant skill is employed.”
"This a very interesting piece of writing and it comes out of a valuable project. The conviction that there are lessons to draw from past experiences of education, and particularly activist forms of education, is a refreshing one. … In some sections there are clear new contributions to knowledge based on 73. archival or published sources. Taken together the project has the potential to make a substantive contribution to the field of education by bring [sic] together, in a new and interdisciplinary fashion, education and postcolonial research. So there is much that is very promising here."