Legal Consideration Relating to Broadcasting Work in Television Business: A Study of Damages Determination in Copyright Infringement Cases.

Abstract

This research article is a part of the thesis “Legal Consideration Relating to Broadcasting Work in Television Business: A Study of Damages Determination in Copyright Infringement Cases”. The purpose of this thesis is to study varied types of damages that may cause by Copyright infringement of Broadcasting work in television business. The television copyrighted work is important in the economy and society. Television business provides news and entertainment to the society which is worth an economic value of tens billions Baht. Nowadays, Communication Technology have been developed and progressed rapidly. This leads to Copyright infringement in the television broadcasting business easily, quickly, and broadly covering area all over the world. For instance, copyright infringement by broadcasting or rebroadcasting on the Internet.

The study found that Section 64 of the Copyright Act B.E. 2537 (1994), rules and process of determining damages are unclear and cannot be used as norm for determining the value of the damages for copyright infringement in Thailand. Meanwhile, the laws of the United Kingdom, the United States, and Germany have clearer provisions and guidelines than Thai law. For examples, there are the principle of compensation from account of profits offenders, statutory damages, and punitive damages including the determination of the burden of proof. A defendant has the burden of proof to refute in some cases too.

From the research, the researcher  proposes the amendment of Section 64 of the Copyright Act B.E. 2537 (1994) including proposing guidelines for determining the value of damages in cases of copyright infringement in television broadcasting business as Ministerial Regulations by taking related factors to television programs in to account such as platform infringement, territories  infringement, type of TV programs, old-new of TV programs, number of episodes, popularity rate (rating) on ​​TV programs, selling price and advertising minutes, the number of viewers and access to work and the value of trade reputation. All these factors can be used to determine the value of damages as well.