SINGAPORE: The High Court dismissed Virtual Map's appeal against the District Court's decision that the company had infringed Singapore Land Authority's (SLA) copyright in its street directory maps.

The High Court also upheld the injunction granted by District Court, prohibiting Virtual Map from reproducing SLA's street directory maps and from distributing or selling reproductions of the maps.

The company was also ordered to compensate SLA and pay its legal costs.

Virtual Map's lawyer said the company would now take the matter to the Court of Appeal.

Between 1999 and 2003, Virtual Map entered into non-exclusive licence agreements with SLA to use the Authority's street directory maps and address point data to produce maps. These were then made available on Virtual Map's website - www.streetdirectory.com.

SLA had to terminate the licences granted to Virtual Map in July 2004 when the latter asserted that its maps at www.streetdirectory.com were independently created and were not substantially reproduced from SLA's maps and data.

However, Virtual Map had continued to use SLA's maps and data, infringing the Authority's copyright.

SLA then decided to take legal action against Virtual Map in October 2005 for copyright infringement.

In August 2007, the District Court decided in SLA's favour and granted an injunction restraining Virtual Map from infringing SLA's copyright.

In rejecting the appeal, Judge Tan Lee Meng gave a few reasons:
Firstly, "errors" that were placed in SLA's maps to trap infringers, as well as genuine mistakes, were reproduced in Virtual Map's copies.

Secondly, Virtual Map's maps could hardly be called independent creations as the inexperience of its main map-makers showed up during cross-examination.

Thirdly, even though Virtual Map had improved and beautified the maps, the company was still heavily dependent on SLA's core features.

If their last-ditch appeal fails, Virtual Maps will have to remove the disputed maps from the internet. This will have a wide-ranging impact on those organisations and companies with maps that are linked to www.streetdirectory.com.


- CNA/so