Gates v. Swift

Citation: Gates v. Swift, [1982] R.C.P. 339.

This U.K. case involved the unauthorized duplication and sale of copies of plaintiff's published programs “LEVEL III BASIC,” “MONITOR 3,” “VOODOO CASTLE,” “The Count,” and “Mystery Funhouse,” a mixture of application and operating system programs. The court found that all the works were written in assembly language, and that each required several months' effort on the part of the authors.

The court accepted plaintiff's argument that the programs were literary works fixed in a material form in accordance with the contemplation of fixation in Article 2(1) of the Brussels text of the Berne Convention. Accordingly the court issued an ex parte order that the allegedly infringing copies be seized by the plaintiff.