Of Copyright and Weddings: Not-so-strange bed fellows

I could not afford not to smile when I came across a news item concerning a battle of sorts between ‘owners’ or producers of the wedding shows ‘Samantha Bridal’ and ‘Baileys Weddings’ both currently aired at least weekly in Kenya’s TV stations. Not that I am one to smile at ladies in wedding gowns battling it out ( a sight that may soon be witnessed in Kenya following Parliament’s passing of the Marriage Bill that allows a man, whilst married, to marry a second…a third… a forth wife *you get the picture* ). Rather, I smiled because the dispute was, strangely, about copyright.
Kenya media reports (http://www.careerpointkenya.co.ke/2014/04/05/kenyan-top-tv-wedding-shows-queens-take-legal-battle-to-court/ and http://nairobinews.nation.co.ke/battle-of-the-brides-spills-to-the-courts/ ) that Baileys Wedding’s Jane Wambui Odewale has accussed  Samantha Bridal’s Catherine Masitsa of copying the former’s pilot programme and related documents which the former was scheduled to use. It was reported that Catherine Masitsa denied, among others, ever coming across the pilot programme she is being accused of copying and further that the Samantha Bridal’s show had been “independently created and produced by Bauhaus Ltd.”
The parties are reportedly in court and I am not aware how far the proceedings in respect of copyright infringement have gone as what I have come across is merely a ruling by the judge on the inadmissibility of certain CD evidence produced by the plaintiffs the proprietors of Baileys Wedding show (reported here http://kenyalaw.org/caselaw/cases/view/95650/ )
That notwithstanding, I find this to be a unique area for claiming copyright. In Kenya, copyright protected works include literary, musical, and artistic works, as well as broadcasts. The “author” of the copyright protected work is the owner of the work, and this author is defined as “the person who first makes or creates the work”. In respect of a television program show casing weddings and preparations sorrounding weddings- the ‘before, during and after’ of weddings-, copyright certainly subsists in the broadcast of the program for a start. But broadcasts do no appear to be what is in dispute between the two bridal shows.
The dispute seems to be about the ideas/structure of the show. If this is the case, then an assessment of copyright infringement should be based on whether or not any written ideas about one show have been copied by the other and either also written or otherwise replicated in any form.
Fundamental to determining the copyright infringement issue is (1) whether the ideas/structure of the show in issue was ever written down or otherwise reduced into writing and (2) whether such ideas/structures about the show are original, both of which are the necessary ingredients for a claim of copyright in a literary, musical or artistic work.
If the authors of Baileys Wedding had in fact reduced the idea/structure of the particular show into some form of writing, and if these written/fixed ideas/structure were original, and if the author’s of Samantha Bridal show then had access to such material and therefore the opportunity to copy, and if it is shown that the authors of Samantha Bridal show is a form of reproduction of those fixed and original ideas/structure of a show, then I would say that this would be classic copyright infringement.
Now, if only there weren’t so many ‘ifs’….
Will update you on news of the proceedings.