A man has sued RTE in the High Court claiming that RTE stole the idea for a television show, Celebrity Bainsteoir. Patrick Kinsella claims that he presented RTE with an idea for a show called Top Coach or Top Team in August 2007. His idea was rejected at the time by both RTE and TV3. Mr Kinsella later discovered that the Celebrity Bainsteoir show was broadcast on RTE in November 2007. RTE contend that they informed Mr Kinsella at a meeting in August 2007 that Celebrity Bainsteoir was about to go out on air. RTE says that it was first approached about the show in 2004 by Setanta TV and then finally took up the show from another production company in 2006.
Section 17 of the Copyright and Related Rights Act 2000 provides that copyright subsists in original literary, dramatic, musical or artistic works. However, this section also provides that an idea underpinning such a work does not enjoy copyright protection. An idea must be expressed in some tangible form in order to be protected.
As copyright law cannot protect ideas, an applicant such as Mr Kinsella may have recourse under the law of confidence. Mr Kinsella believes that he submitted his idea to RTE which they then used to gain a commercial advantage. The case of House of Spring Gardens v Point Blank Ltd. provides the authoritative Irish judicial statement on the duty of confidence. In that case, Costello J outlined that the Court, in such situations, must firstly determine:
- Whether there exists from the relationship between the parties, an obligation of confidence regarding the information
- Whether the information can properly be regarded as confidential information.
Costello J held that once an obligation exists and the information is confidential, then the person to whom it was given has a duty to act in good faith and not to use the information to the detriment of the informant. Mr Kinsella will likely claim that RTE breached this duty to act in good faith and used his idea as a 'springboard' to gain a commercial advantage.
RTE may successfully defend the case if they can prove that Celebrity Bainsteoir was already in production and therefore that the idea underpinning the show did not originate from the information given to them by Mr Kinsella.
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