Copyrighting a Fact: How Railcorp claims copyright in a train timetable

Alvin Singh has received a cease and desist notice from RailCorp Sydney, demanding that he remove his popular iPhone application Transit Sydney from the itunes applications store.

They are likely to be relying on the previous decision of Desktop Marketing Systems Pty Ltd v Telstra Corporation Ltd (2002), where it was found that Telstra owned copyright in the Telstra White Pages, a telephone directory. However, the 2007 case of Ice TV went against this decision, with a finding that there was no copyright infringement when Ice TV distributed an electronic, subscription based reproduction of Nine Networks programing schedule. The judge in Ice TV distinguished Desktop Marketing Systems as there is only one logical way of organising a telephone directory, but many ways of presenting broadcasting schedules. I am of the opinion that this will fall into the latter category, however every case turns on its facts in this situation (there appears to be no settled law on this point).