Court sees some grounds for GYP to appeal in copyright infringement case

SINGAPORE'S Court of Appeal sees two grounds for the publisher behind the Yellow Pages directories to file an appeal against an earlier High Court judgement that there was no copyright infringement on its works by its rival.

In January last year, main board-listed Global Yellow Pages (GYP) had lost a case against Promedia Directories, which publishes the Green Book, that the latter had copied from its directories from 2003 to 2009. The directories are three printed ones - the Business Listings, the Yellow Pages Business and the Yellow Pages Consumer - and the online Internet Yellow Pages.

The judge also allowed Promedia's counter-claim against it for groundless threat of copyright infringement. He ordered damages on the counter-claim payable by GYP to be assessed separately; Promedia was also awarded costs.

On Thursday morning, GYP said in a Singapore Exchange filing that the Court of Appeal, in an April 19, 2017, judgement, said that "there is subsistence of copyright in each edition of the Business Listings Directory as a whole (the 2003/2004, 2004/2005, 2005/2006, 2006/2007, 2007/2008, 2008/2009 and

2009/2010 editions), insofar as it relates to the arrangement of the listings".

The judgement also ruled that the letters of demand sent by GYP to the defendant "did not constitute groundless threats of copyright infringement".

Otherwise, the appeal is dismissed, the judgement noted.

GYP and the defendant have two weeks to provide written submissions on costs of the appeal, noted the Thursday filing.

"Further announcements will be made by the company as and when there are any additional material developments," the filing said.

GYP's counter closed higher on Wednesday by 4.07 per cent at 17.9 Singapore cents.