New Zealand businessman Sir Ian Taylor says sailing legend Sir Russell Coutts is incorrectly claiming that technology used in the 36th America’s Cup broadcast is in breach of copyright law, and is threatening to launch a counter-claim if a legal challenge by Coutts is successful.
Taylor said Coutts’ companies, Oracle Racing and SailGP, filed copyright infringement claims against his company Animation Research Ltd (ARL) and two other companies just prior to Christmas, in relation to graphics ARL developed for live America’s Cup racing broadcasts.
Stuff has not seen the claims but Taylor says Coutts’ companies believe that, since 2010, they have owned the superimposed concepts of a fixed border defining a race course, parallel lines on the water with numbers showing distances between objects, and the display of sponsorship names on course borders.
Taylor, speaking strictly on behalf of ARL, said he was confident he would be able to prove Coutts did not own the concept of fixed borders and parallel lines and that ARL was the original creator of the concepts for work done on the 1992 America’s Cup in San Diego.
Taylor said that in a “vindictive” move, Coutts’ companies served ARL on December 23 with a deadline of January 5 to respond. They also threatened to seek an injunction from the High Court to stop the graphics being used in broadcast, he said.
The graphics have already been used in the pre-Christmas Prada America’s World Cup Series and are set to be used in the Prada Cup, due to start on Friday, and the America’s Cup.
Taylor said that even if Coutts was correct and the graphics were in breach of copyright, there were backup systems in place to ensure fans could still watch the racing with graphics.
“The event will not suffer.”
In a written statement, provided via a spokeswoman in the United States, Coutts said his companies were seeking to safeguard intellectual property that they invested millions of dollars in to develop over the past decade.
“We prefer not to be forced to protect our rights via legal processes but, as with all copyrighted material, it must be licensed for use by commercial entities.
“We have requested that the current America’s Cup organisers either avoid infringement by revising their graphics or pay an appropriate licence fee.”
The Wellington-born yachting great famously won the America’s Cup with Team New Zealand in 1995 as skipper and helmsman of Black Magic. He went on to successfully defend the cup in Auckland in 2000 before jumping ship to sail for challenger syndicate Alinghi, which went on to defeat Team New Zealand in the 2003 America’s Cup.
He later became chief executive of BMW Oracle Racing, backed primarily by US billionaire Larry Ellison, which won the Auld Mug in 2010 and 2013.
Coutts’ Sail GP runs a rival series to the America’s Cup.
