Battle of the Daleks at High Court – and copyright bid is exterminated

THE BBC has won a courtroom battle over who owns the book rights to Doctor Who's long-standing enemy, the Daleks.

Paul Fishman, the son of a friend of Dalek creator Terry Nation, claimed at the High Court in London that his company, JHP, held the book copyright to Dalek stories and that it had been infringed by BBC Worldwide in a new publication about the alien beings.

But Mr Justice Norris ruled yesterday that, although JHP held a licence to publish several books by Terry Nation about the Daleks in the 1960s, it did not own the copyright.

The judge said: "The Daleks first became known to humankind in 1963 when they appeared in the first series of Doctor Who. They were some of the most engaging and enduring creations of the fertile mind of the late Terry Nation."

He said Paul Fishman's father, Jack, knew Terry Nation, who died in 1997, and the Daleks were a subject of conversation.

Paul Fishman inherited his father's publishing company which had published Terry Nation's Dalek books.