Copyright Act, 1911 (Extension to Palestine) Order, 1924, Fair Dealing Exception

The Copyright Act, 1911 (Extension to Palestine) Order, 1924 extended the Imperial Copyright Act, 1911 to Palestine as its law of copyright. The extension order was published at 114 Official Gazette 643. Section 2(1)(i) of the extended Act excepts from infringement any fair dealing with a work for the purposes of private study, research, criticism, review, or newspaper summary, with no headline-length or short-extract cap and no restriction to the press industry.

Whether this exception, or copyright protection generally, reaches a systematic aggregator's reproduction of headlines and snippets rather than a reporter's own newspaper summary has not been confirmed by a located court ruling. The earliest reported dispute on unauthorised copying of news wire reports, Palestine Telegraphic Agency v. Jaber, pitted the Palestine Telegraphic Agency and the Palestine Bulletin against Jaber, editor of the newspaper Al-Hayat.

The defendant's argument that the Act had never been validly promulgated in Palestine was rejected by the Magistrate's Court and the District Court and was not renewed on the further appeal reported at CA 66/32, Palestine Telegraphic Agency v. Jaber, [1933] 1 PLR 780. The underlying copying question's ultimate disposition is not confirmed in the sources located here.

The United Kingdom itself later repealed the Act's original Sections 1 to 14, including Section 2's infringement and fair-dealing provisions, by the Copyright Act 1956; that domestic UK repeal does not by its own force undo Palestine's earlier reception of the Act's original 1911 text, and no subsequent Jordanian, Egyptian, or Palestinian enactment repealing or replacing the extended Act is confirmed here.

The Act arms a copyright owner with a private civil remedy: an infringement action carries injunction, damages, and account of profits, with a statutory presumption that the plaintiff owns the copyright unless the defendant puts the point in issue.