Case information

Intellectual property — Copyright — Infringement — Administrative law — Natural justice — Procedure — Self-represented litigants — Applicant hired to produce conceptual drawings for building expansion — Applicant alleging copyright infringement for unauthorized use of drawings — Whether Court of Appeal erred by refusing, and not giving reasonable notice of refusal prior to hearing of appeal, applicant’s motion to tender additional evidence — Whether Court of Appeal erred by erroneously applying R. v. Palmer, [1980] S.C.R. 759 to deny motion to tender additional evidence — Whether Court of Appeal erred by failing to conduct appeal hearing consistent with established principles with respect to self-represented litigants.

Case summaries are prepared by the Office of the Registrar of the Supreme Court of Canada (Law Branch). Please note that summaries are not provided to the Judges of the Court. They are placed on the Court file and website for information purposes only.

The applicant, Ms. MacNutt, is a building designer. She and her company (PIER 101 Home Designs Inc.) agreed to provide the respondent Acadia University with a promotional rendering and concept drawings for a potential building expansion, for a fixed fee. The University then used Ms. MacNutt’s drawings for presentation purposes to help with fundraising efforts for the project. Once funding had been secured, the University retained the respondent Troy Scott, and his company, the respondent T.A. Scott Architecture + Design Limited, to proceed with the project. Ms. MacNutt discovered that a newspaper concerning a public information meeting about the project included an image of Ms. MacNutt’s drawings, but did not credit her as the author of the drawings. Ms. MacNutt alleges that the respondents infringed her copyright in the drawings.

The application judge dismissed Ms. MacNutt’s application for copyright infringement, finding that Ms. MacNutt failed to establish that the respondents were involved in any unauthorized taking of her original drawings, as the Scott design was separate and distinct from Ms. MacNutt’s design. The Court of Appeal denied Ms. MacNutt’s motion to adduce fresh evidence in support of her complaint that the application judge failed to respect the principles of natural justice, and dismissed this ground of appeal. The Court of Appeal also dismissed Ms. MacNutt’s appeal on the merits, finding no reviewable error in the application judge’s decision or his findings of fact.