21 February 2025
COPYRIGHT (UK) – BBC reality TV format copying claim struck out
A woman who claimed the format of a BBC series hosted by Stacey Dooley was copied from a pitch document she made with a photo of Kim Kardashian has had her £10 million claim struck out.
Gladness Jukic was suing the BBC and Wall to Wall Media Limited (‘W2W’) because she claimed Glow Up: Britain’s Next Make-Up Star had been copied from a treatment she sent the broadcaster.
The High Court has now dismissed the case after concluding that Ms Jukic failed to particularise her intellectual property claim in a coherent manner.
Ms Jukic claimed she first approached a BBC Commissioner with her reality TV show idea via LinkedIn and then sent a document with further details about her concept to the BBC by email.
She alleged that Glow Up copied everything in her treatment with both it and the show involving themed, time limited challenges in which competitors were judged by professional make-up artists.
As part of her claim, Ms Jukic noted that her treatment included a photo of Kim Kardashian’s face with two hands and two makeup brushes on one side - and Season 1 of Glow Up included a photo of Stacey Dooley’s face with four hands and four makeup brushes on both sides of Dooley’s face.
She also alleged the BBC hacked her computer in breach of the Computer Misuse Act 1990 and the Prevention from Harassment Act 1997 to destroy evidence that implicated it - which the BBC denied.
Ms Jukic applied for summary judgment in May 2024.
In June 2024 the BBC and W2W asked the court to strike out Ms Jukic’s claim and or grant them summary judgment. A hearing took place in December 2024 but Ms Jukic did not attend.
In striking out Ms Jukic’s computer misuse and harassment claims, the Court noted that the Computer Misuse Act 1990 does not contain any provisions which allow individuals to pursue a civil claim and Ms Jukic had not set out a cause of action for harassment – and, ultimately, both were “without merit”.
The court struck out Ms Jukic’s intellectual property claim because it concluded that it had not been particularised in a coherent manner.
The court went on to state that even if it had declined to strike out Ms Jukic’s claim, it would have refused her summary judgment application and granted summary judgment to the BBC and W2W.
The court acknowledged that there were some similarities between the show described in Ms Jukic’s treatment and Glow Up but concluded that they were simply high level ideas that have been present in many other shows as opposed to original features that are protected by copyright law.
When it came to Kardashian and Dooley, the court noted that it was not claimed that, and it seemed unlikely that, Ms Jukic owned any rights in the picture of Kardashian – and the idea of using a person’s face alongside the hands of a make-up artist is not something copyright would protect.
After considering the similarities and the differences between the two, the court found that the differences were far greater than the similarities, and the shows had very different intentions.
In particular, the court noted that Ms Jukic’s concept involved a 10 minute makeover whereas Glow Up placed little emphasis on the strictness of a time limit; Glow Up had a complex three act structure whereas Ms Jukic’s treatment involved one particular type of competition; Glow Up placed an emphasis on the back stories of individual makeup artists whereas Ms Jukic’s treatment did not feature that idea or a presenter who drew out those back stories; and Ms Jukic’s treatment involved a branded approach aimed at highlighting different brands through partnerships whereas Glow Up featured third parties as the users of the services of makeup artists not as suppliers to them.
The case acts as a reminder that anyone wishing to bring a format infringement claim in the UK needs to give careful consideration to the pleading of their case – and will normally have to show that a substantial part of a pre-existing dramatic or literary work created by them has been copied.
COPYRIGHT (UK) – Mail Online sued by agency for using Facebook photo without payment
Mail Online is being sued by a news agency after publishing a Facebook photo of a woman called Mahsa Amini who was beaten to death in Iran for not wearing a headscarf.
Newsflash claims it had independently sourced a better quality version of the photo and can prove the publisher used its version because it contained a mark that it had digitally added to the image.
The story of 22 year old Amini was first reported by the Mail Online on 16 September 2022 using a photo from Facebook that contained a green mark down the left hand side.
Newsflash claims it was already investigating the story at that point and sourced a better version of the photo through its correspondent in Iran, which it altered and then circulated to publishers.
In particular, it claims it added a leaf to the branch of a tree in the background of the image.
It alleges that subsequent articles published by the Mail included the version with this secret mark but when it requested payment from the Mail for the publication of that version, the Mail refused.
In a claim filed at the County Court, Newsflash alleges that if the publisher or one of its suppliers “.. had indeed taken the image directly from the victim’s family as they claim and had also filed six days before Newsflash, as they also claim, then the content could not possibly have had the Newsflash copyright mark .. however, on at least seven occasions, it had the secret copyright mark ...”
Newsflash is reportedly seeking £1,110 from Mail Online, including a total of £280 for the seven occasions on which it says its version of the photo was used by the Mail based on £40 per use.
The publisher has said Newsflash “cannot demand payment for the use of a photograph for which they neither own the copyright nor act as the exclusive management for the copyright owners ...”
In a statement it described the claim as baseless and said it would vigorously defend itself.
MISCELLANEOUS (US) – Trump seeks $20 billion in damages from CBS over “editing” row
President Trump has amended his lawsuit against CBS, demanding $20 billion – up from $10 billion – and again claiming the CBS deceptively edited a 60 Minutes interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris in an effort to prop up her election chances.
It is claimed that the first sentence of Harris’ answer to a question about the Israel-Hamas War was included in Face the Nation and the following day 60 Minutes used the same question but included the second part of Harris’ response.
Trump commenced proceedings for $10 billion last year, alleging that CBS had violated Texas consumer law when it edited Harris’ answer. Trump argued that the broadcast was edited to make Harris appear “coherent and decisive,” and misled the public and unfairly disadvantaged him. He said he had standing to sue as a consumer of the broadcast who had been deceived.
CBS denied that it had “doctored” the interview, that Harris's long response needed to be cut due to the show's one-hour time constraint, that each excerpt reflected the substance of Harris’ answer and that it was not an unusual editing technique in TV news. It called Trump’s claims "completely without merit" and sought to dismiss the claim, arguing that the broadcast was protected by the First Amendment.
However, Trump then amended his claim – apparently in a bid to steer the case away from First Amendment arguments – by adding a new claim for an additional $10 billion saying that he was also harmed as a competitor to CBS claiming that as a result of the editing, viewership was improperly diverted to CBS’ media platforms resulting in lower consumer engagement, advertising revenues and profits for his Truth Social platform and his other media ventures.
To add to CBS’ woes in relation to the interview, the new Trump-appointed chair of the US Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) took the unusual step of re-opening a complaint alleging CBS, in editing the interview, wrongly altered one of Harris’ answers. The complaint had previously been dismissed with the former chair saying the FCC should not act as “speech police”.
The FCC, which has the power to revoke a broadcast station’s license, is apparently investigating potential violations of the FCC’s “news distortion” policy. This generally requires some extrinsic evidence of deliberate and knowing distortion other than the broadcast itself, for example proof of a bribe or orders from management to fabricate news. Trump has called for CBS to lose its license.
The investigation comes at a time where CBS’ parent company Paramount is seeking FCC approval to transfer the licenses of CBS’ local stations to Skydance Media as part of its pending merger.
Meta
Elsewhere, it is reported that Trump has accepted a settlement from Meta worth $20 million after his accounts were suspended in 2021 following the Capitol riots. It is understood that the majority of the settlement will go to a fund for Trump’s presidential library with the balance being used to cover legal costs. Meta has not admitted wrongdoing.
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