## Facts

- Infopaq International A/S operated a commercial media-monitoring service based on scanning Danish newspapers and periodicals and supplying customers with results from keyword searches.
- Its “data capture” process included: registering publications; scanning them into image files; using OCR to convert images into text; searching for predefined keywords; and, for each keyword “hit,” extracting and printing an 11-word snippet (the keyword plus five words before and after) for customers.
- Danske Dagblades Forening (an association of Danish daily newspaper publishers) objected that the process reproduced protected content without authorization.
- Infopaq sought a declaration that authorization was unnecessary because the extracts were too short to be protected and/or the acts were exempt as temporary reproductions under EU copyright law.
- Danish courts rejected Infopaq’s position, and the Danish Supreme Court referred questions to the Court of Justice of the European Union concerning the scope of the reproduction right and the temporary reproduction exception.

## Issues

1. Whether storing and printing an 11-word extract from a newspaper article constitutes “reproduction in part” when the extract may contain protected expression.
2. Whether acts in a digital processing chain, including printing an 11-word extract, qualify for the temporary reproduction exception requiring that copies be transient/incidental, integral to a technological process, solely to enable a lawful use or network transmission, and lacking independent economic significance.

## Decision

- The court held that storing and printing an 11-word extract can constitute “reproduction in part” if the reproduced elements are the author’s own intellectual creation; the national court must determine whether particular extracts meet that standard.
- The court held that printing an 11-word extract does not satisfy the requirement that the act of reproduction be “transient,” and therefore does not fall within the temporary reproduction exception.
- The court emphasized that the reproduction right is broad and that exceptions must be construed strictly and applied only when all statutory conditions are met.

## Legal Principles

- Copyright protection applies only to subject matter that is original in the sense that it is the author’s own intellectual creation.
- Parts of a work are protected when they contain elements that express the author’s intellectual creation; even very small portions (including parts of sentences) may qualify depending on the selection, sequence, and combination of words.
- “Reproduction in part” is interpreted broadly and can include technical fixations made during digital processing when they capture protected expression.
- The temporary reproduction exception applies only if all conditions are satisfied, including that the copy is limited to what is necessary for the technological process and is automatically deleted without human intervention.
- A printed extract is not “transient” because it persists until a person chooses to destroy it, and it may also have independent economic significance when it forms part of a commercial output.
- Exceptions must comply with the three-step test: they must be confined to special cases, not conflict with normal exploitation, and not unreasonably prejudice rightholders’ legitimate interests.

## Conclusion

The court ruled that 11-word newspaper snippets may be protected “parts” when they reflect the author’s own intellectual creation, and that printing such snippets during a media-monitoring process is not transient copying, placing it outside the temporary reproduction exception and generally requiring authorization absent another applicable exception.


Infopaq Int’l A/S v. Danske Dagblades Forening, Case C-5/08 (C.J.E.U. 2009)