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PART III

DEFECTS OF THE PRESENT LAW

3.1      The defects of the present law may be divided into two main categories: those relating to conspiracy to defraud, and those relating to the statutory crimes.

Conspiracy to defraud

An anomalous crime

3.2      The concept of fraud, for the purposes of conspiracy to defraud, is wider than the range of conduct caught by any of the individual statutory offences involving dishonest behaviour. Thus it can be criminal for two people to agree to do something which it would not be unlawful for one person to do.
3.3      This anomaly has an historical basis. Before the Criminal Law Act 1977, a criminal conspiracy could be based on an agreement to commit an unlawful but non-criminal act, such as a tort or breach of contract. It appears that the justification for this was that there was a greater danger from people acting in concert than alone. As Professor Andrew Ashworth has explained:

In legal terms, the reasoning seemed to be that acts which were insufficiently antisocial to justify criminal liability when done by one person could become sufficiently antisocial to justify criminal liability when done by two or more people acting in agreement. Such a combination of malefactors might increase the probability of harm resulting, might in some cases increase public alarm, and might in other cases facilitate the perpetration and concealment of the wrong.^[1]

3.4      The 1977 Act was the implementation of our Report on Conspiracy and Criminal Law Reform, which "emphatically" concluded that

the object of a conspiracy should be limited to the commission of a substantive offence and that there should be no place in a criminal code for a law of conspiracy extending beyond this ambit. An agreement should not be criminal where that which it was agreed should be done would not amount to a criminal offence if committed by one person.^[2]

3.5      This Commission has repeated its adherence to this principle in subsequent reports^[3] and we believe it commands very wide support.^[4] Either conspiracy to defraud is too wide in its scope (in that it catches agreements to do things which are rightly not criminal) or the statutory offences are too narrow (in that they fail to catch certain conduct which should be criminal) – or, which is our view, the problem is a combination of the two. On any view, the present position is anomalous and has no place in a coherent criminal law.^[5]

The definition of "to defraud"

3.6      As we stated in paragraphs 2.4 to 2.6, the cases on the meaning of "to defraud" have given it a broad meaning, so that any dishonest agreement to make a gain at another's expense could form the basis of conspiracy to defraud. We take the view that this definition is too broad. In a capitalist society, commercial life revolves around the pursuit of gain for oneself and, as a corollary, others may lose out, whether directly or indirectly. Such behaviour is perfectly legitimate. It is only the element of "dishonesty" which renders it a criminal fraud. In other words, that element "does all the work" in assessing whether particular facts fall within the definition of the crime.
3.7      In most cases it will be self-evident that the conduct alleged, if proved, would be dishonest, and the question will be whether that conduct has been proved. Nonetheless, in some cases, the defence will argue that the alleged conduct was not dishonest. There is no statutory definition of dishonesty, so the issue is determined with reference to Ghosh.^[6] In that case it was held that the fact-finders must be satisfied (a) that the defendant's conduct was dishonest according to the ordinary standards of reasonable and honest people, and (b) that the defendant must have realised that it was dishonest according to those standards (as opposed to his or her own standards).
3.8      Activities which would otherwise be legitimate can therefore become fraudulent if a jury is prepared to characterise them as dishonest.^[7] Not only does this delegate to the jury the responsibility for defining what conduct is to be regarded as fraudulent, but it leaves prosecutors with an uncommonly broad discretion when they are deciding whether to pursue a conspiracy to defraud case. If, for example, the directors of a company enter into "industrial espionage" in order to gain the edge over a competitor, they could potentially be prosecuted for conspiracy to defraud, despite the absence of any statutory offence governing such activities. As Smith and Hogan states, the offence opens "a very broad vista of potential criminal liability".^[8]
3.9      In effect, conspiracy to defraud is a "general dishonesty offence", subject only to the irrational requirement of conspiracy. We consider the arguments for and against such offences in Part V below, where we conclude that their disadvantages outweigh their advantages.

The statutory crimes

The need for simplification and rationalisation

3.10      At present, there is a multitude of overlapping but distinct statutory offences which can be employed in fraud trials.^[9] As Griew noted:

No one wanting to construct a rational, efficient law of criminal fraud would choose to start from the present position. The law … is in a very untidy and unsatisfactory condition. The various offences are not so framed and related to each other as to cover, in a clearly organised way and without doubt or strained interpretation, the range of conduct with which the law should be able to deal.^[10]

3.11      Arguably, the law of fraud is suffering from an "undue particularisation of closely allied crimes".^[11] Over-particularisation or "untidiness" is undesirable in itself, but it also has undesirable consequences.
3.12      First, it allows technical arguments to prosper. When the original Theft Act deception offences were first proposed by the CLRC in their Eighth Report, this problem was foreseen by a minority of the committee members:

To list and define the different objects which persons who practise deception aim at achieving is unsatisfactory and dangerous, because it is impossible to be certain that any list would be complete. Technical distinctions would also inevitably be drawn – as they have been drawn under [the Larceny Act] 1916 s 32 – between conduct which did and which did not fall within the list.^[12]

3.13      The minority who took this view were in favour of a single deception offence, which would not define the offence by reference to the nature of the victim's loss or the relationship between that loss and the defendant's corresponding gain:

The essence of the offence would be dishonestly using deception for the purpose of gain … What particular type of gain the offender may aim at getting for himself or somebody else at the expense of his victim should be of no account except for the purpose of sentence.^[13]

3.14      They were echoing the sentiments of Lord Hardwicke:

Fraud is infinite, and were a court once to … define strictly the species of evidences of it, the jurisdiction would be cramped, and perpetually eluded by new schemes which the fertility of man's invention would contrive.^[14]

3.15      However, the majority of the committee took the view that it would be wrong to introduce a general offence. This disagreement was resolved by a compromise. The CLRC recommended two specific offences and a general offence which would carry a limited sentence of two years.^[15] This compromise did not find favour with Parliament, and a somewhat complex legislative history ensued. The proposed general offence was not adopted, and the present array of specific offences developed over subsequent years.
3.16      Nonetheless, the views of the minority who had advocated the general offence were found by Lord Goff in Preddy to have been "prescient".^[16] This was a mortgage fraud case. The defendants made false representations when applying for loans to buy property, and they were charged with obtaining property by deception. Although this is one of the most general deception offences, Lord Goff came to the reluctant conclusion that their actions fell outside it. The rest of the House^[17] agreed.
3.17      The difficulty lay in the nature of the property which the defendants obtained. The mortgage lenders provided the defendants with loans by making transfers from their accounts to the defendants' accounts. As Lord Goff explained, the resulting credit balances in the defendants' accounts were choses in action which had never belonged to anyone but the respective defendants. While the lenders had corresponding decreases in their respective accounts, at no time had they had any form of proprietary interest in the defendants' credit balances. Therefore these balances had never been property "belonging to another", for the purposes of section 15 of the Theft Act 1968.
3.18      In reaching this conclusion, Lord Goff considered the CLRC Eighth Report, and the subsequent legislative history. He made it clear that, in his view, the CLRC minority had been right to advocate a single deception offence.^[18] It is, perhaps, unsurprising that he reached this view. The defence argument in Preddy exploited the very elements of section 15 which the CLRC minority saw as irrelevant to the definition of fraud: the nature of the loss, and the relationship between the loss and the illegitimate gain.^[19]
3.19      Preddy was not the only case of its kind. It was only the most significant of a long string of highly technical cases involving deception offences: Duru,^[20] Halai,^[21] King,^[22] Mitchell,^[23] Manjdadria,^[24] and Mensah Lartey and Relevy.^[25] Each of these defendants argued that the particular consequences which he had brought about by deception fell outside the definition of the offence with which he was charged. By relying on a range of specific fraud offences, defined with reference to different types of consequence, the law is left vulnerable to technical assaults.^[26]
3.20      The second difficulty that arises from over-particularisation is that a defendant may face the wrong charge, or too many charges. Some of the cases cited in the previous paragraph would have been less problematic had the defendant been charged with a different offence. In Mensah Lartey and Relevy the defendants were charged with conspiring and attempting to procure the execution of a valuable security.^[27] The prosecution accepted in the Court of Appeal that they should have been charged with conspiring or attempting to obtain property by deception (although, since Preddy, section 15 would not have helped either). In Duru and Mitchell, the deceptions resulted in banks making out cheques in the defendants' favour. They were charged with obtaining property by deception, when the correct charge was procuring the execution of a valuable security.
3.21      This problem is not confined to cases which are wrongly prosecuted under one deception offence rather than another. In Gomez^[28] the defendant was the assistant manager of a shop. He deceived the manager into giving a customer goods in exchange for cheques which the defendant knew to be stolen. He was charged with theft. The case went to the House of Lords, because of an ambiguity in the concept of "appropriation" in theft. Four of their Lordships upheld the conviction, but Lord Lowry gave a powerful dissenting speech, and the issue has continued to cause difficulty. In fact, the argument need not have arisen in that case: the defendant would not have been able to raise it if he had been charged with obtaining property by deception, and he would have been squarely convicted on the agreed facts. It is not clear why the prosecutors chose to persist with bringing a theft charge. Perhaps they were aware of potential legal or factual problems that might arise if the wrong deception offence were charged. They may simply have been insufficiently familiar with the deception offences. In either event, a clear general deception offence might have enabled them to charge an offence which more comfortably reflected the conduct alleged, even though it also fell within the legal definition of theft.
3.22      A similar situation arose recently in Vincent.^[29] The defendant was charged with the offence of making off without payment.^[30] He had stayed in two hotels and left without paying the full bill. He argued that he had made arrangements to pay the bills "when he could", so that by the time he left there was no expectation that he would pay for the services at that point, and therefore payment "on the spot" was not required or expected. The trial judge directed the jury that this was only a defence if the agreement to defer payment was made in good faith by both parties, so it was no defence if the agreement had been brought about by fraud or deception. The Court of Appeal quashed the resultant convictions, stating that this direction was incorrect: even if the agreement was brought about by fraud, it still meant that the defendant was not expected to pay when he left, so he could not be guilty of making off without payment. The court stated that to catch this fraud a different offence would need to be charged, such as obtaining services by deception.^[31] Again, had the right charge been selected, much legal argument could have been avoided.
3.23      We do not argue that all the Theft Act offences could or should be combined into one. The fewer there are, however, the easier it is for prosecutors to choose the right one, thus decreasing the likelihood of mistakes. At present, in order to avoid mistakes, prosecutors may take the "belt and braces" approach. In Law Com No 228 we recognised that this practice brings its own problems:

We are … very conscious that there has been much criticism of the length and complexity of fraud trials … [A]lthough much of the criticism was directed to the procedure in criminal trials, there was legitimate criticism of the substantive law in substantial fraud cases, which led to trials of excessive length and to perceptions of injustice. We are concerned to discover if it is possible to reduce the length and complexity of trials by simplifying the law, while always ensuring that the defendant is fully protected.^[32]

3.24      The over-particularisation of fraud offences can result in indictments made complex by the charging of alternative offences. A clearer, simpler law of fraud would make it easier for prosecutors to pursue one correct charge, which in turn would give fraud trials greater focus and structure.

The limitations of "deception"

3.25      The difficulties discussed in the preceding section could arguably be met by consolidating most or all of the eight existing deception offences into one general deception offence, along the lines of that proposed by the minority of the CLRC.^[33] There are, however, further defects in the law of fraud which such an offence would do nothing to solve, because they are inherent in the concept of deception itself.
3.26      The concept of deception was introduced by the Theft Act 1968 in place of the older concept of a "false pretence", which was broadly synonymous with fraudulent misrepresentation. The CLRC wanted to move the focus from the defendant's conduct to the deceived person's mistaken belief:

The word "deception" seems to us … to have the advantage of directing attention to the effect that the offender deliberately produced on the mind of the person deceived, whereas "false pretence" makes one think of what exactly the offender did in order to deceive. "Deception" seems also more apt in relation to deception by conduct.^[34]

3.27      The change was not intended to have any great practical effect, because even before 1968 it was necessary to prove that the defendant had obtained property by a false pretence. This required evidence that the pretence caused the transfer of property to the defendant. If the false pretence was operative, this almost inevitably meant that the dupe was deceived by it.
3.28      Even so, two cases involving payment cards went to the House of Lords, because the defendants argued that even if they had committed a false pretence they had not committed a deception. The argument was rejected by the House of Lords, but some concerns with the reasoning in these decisions remain. Furthermore, there are two kinds of frauds in which the gain is obtained by neither deception nor false pretence: those which are practised on machines, and those involving an abuse of position.

Payment cards and "deceiving" merchants

3.29      To say that a defendant has deceived another person implies that the other person believed in the truth of the defendant's false representation. Sometimes, however, a person will act upon a defendant's false representation without actively considering whether or not it is true. Arguably, such a person has not been truly deceived.
3.30      This argument arose when defendants began using credit card, debit card, cheque guarantee card or similar payment instruments which they had no authority to use. Before these cards were introduced, if a merchant accepted a cheque there was a risk that the bank would not honour it. Many simply refused to take that risk, by requiring payment in cash. This led to the introduction of various forms of "guaranteed" payment cards. The card issuer guarantees that the merchant will receive payment, no matter whether the card is stolen, forged or over the credit or overdraft limit. So long as the merchant accepts the card in accordance with any terms and conditions of the contract between the merchant and the card issuer, the merchant's bill will be settled. Therefore, the merchant has little interest in whether the card holder has authority to use it, and is unlikely to give the matter any thought. If a defendant presents a card to pay for goods or services, the merchant will act in reliance on the implicit representation that the defendant is authorised to use the card; but, if the defendant is not so authorised, it may not be accurate to describe the merchant as "deceived".
3.31      In fact, under the present law, those who use cards without authority can be convicted of a deception offence. The House of Lords held in Charles^[35] and Lambie^[36] (in relation to cheque guarantee cards and credit cards respectively) that the cardholder obtains the goods or services "by deception" if

(1) the tendering of the card carries with it (as it normally will) an implied representation that the cardholder has the issuer's authority to use the card for the transaction in question, and

(2) although the merchant may not positively address his or her mind to the issue of whether or not the cardholder has such authority, the merchant would not have accepted the card in payment if he or she had known that the cardholder had no such authority.

3.32      A merchant who accepted a card with such knowledge would be party to a fraud on the issuer, and therefore not entitled to payment. It may be assumed, without the need for direct evidence on the point, that the merchant is honest and rational and therefore would not accept a card with such knowledge. It follows, according to the House of Lords' reasoning, that a merchant who does accept a card (not knowing that the cardholder has no authority to use it) has been deceived by the cardholder.
3.33      This reasoning is widely thought to be artificial,^[37] and it can lead to problems at trial. Shop assistants do not tend to consider themselves deceived about a fact which is of no interest to them, merely because they would have acted differently had they known the truth, and this may come across in their evidence. Those who do not appreciate the legal position may even admit that they would still have accepted the card even if they had known that the defendant had no authority to use it. In such a situation, the benefit would not have been obtained by deception, so the defendant would have to be acquitted.

Computers and machines

3.34      A machine has no mind, so it cannot believe a proposition to be true or false, and therefore cannot be deceived. A person who dishonestly obtains a benefit by giving false information to a computer or machine is not guilty of any deception offence. Where the benefit obtained is property, he or she will normally be guilty of theft, but where it is something other than property (such as a service), there may be no offence at all.
3.35      This has only become a problem in recent years, as businesses make more use of machines as an interface with their customers. There are now many services available to the public which will usually be paid for via a machine. For example, one would usually pay an internet service provider by entering one's credit card details on its website. Using card details to pay for such a service without the requisite authority would not currently constitute an offence. As the use of the internet and automated call centres expands, this gap in the law will be increasingly indefensible.

Non-disclosure and abuse of position

3.36      The authorities on conspiracy to defraud recognise that it is possible to defraud someone without making explicit false statements or overt representations,^[38] but a deception offence will not always be available in such circumstances.
3.37      In some situations a swindler will disclose half-truths which give a false overall impression. For example, a dealer may prey on vulnerable people, giving them the impression that he will offer a fair price for their antiques, while actually offering to buy them at a substantial undervalue. Or, in a "long firm fraud", the swindler may obtain goods on credit by giving the impression that the firm is a legitimate trading entity, whereas in fact it is established purely to obtain the goods. The swindler may not make any statements which are demonstrably untrue, and indeed may be careful to avoid doing so, but a false overall impression is conveyed to the creditors. In such circumstances, it may be possible to rely on a deception offence.^[39]
3.38      Alternatively, a person who is told nothing, and remains in complete ignorance of the defendant's activities, will not have turned his or her mind to questions of truth and falsity. It is impossible to describe such a person as deceived. Usually when a swindler obtains a benefit in such circumstances, it is because he or she holds a position of trust and thus had privileged access to the benefit. The benefit is not obtained by deception, because the defendant does not need to deceive anyone to obtain it.
3.39      An example of such a case is where a defendant makes a secret profit by abusing a position of employment. In Attorney-General's Reference (No 1 of 1985)^[40] the manager of a public house was charged with theft, having sold his own beer on his employers' premises. The theft charge foundered, because there was no "property belonging to another". It was held that a constructive trust had not arisen, and therefore the employers had no beneficial or proprietary interest in the proceeds of the beer sales. In the alternative it was held that even if a trust had arisen, it was not such a trust as falls within the ambit of section 5(1) of the Theft Act 1968. Nonetheless, most people would probably say that the pub manager was practising a fraud on his employers. The customers who bought the manager's beer would otherwise have bought his employers' beer, and they were only buying the manager's beer because he was selling it on his employers' premises. He was making a gain by using their premises in a way that he was not entitled to, but which he had the opportunity to do because they had entrusted him with the management of their premises; and he was making the gain at their expense.
3.40      Tarling (No 1) v Government of the Republic of Singapore^[41] was a similar case. There was evidence that certain directors of a company had bought shares belonging to the company at a considerable undervalue, without disclosing the transaction to the rest of the board (let alone the shareholders). Two of the charges alleged conspiracy to defraud the shareholders by dishonestly concealing these dealings from them, in breach of their fiduciary duty of disclosure, with the intention of ensuring that they should not require the directors responsible to account for the proceeds. A majority of the House of Lords thought that the evidence did not support these charges. The essence of the decision is that a failure to disclose a secret profit made in breach of fiduciary duty, even if dishonest, does not in itself amount to fraud. In Adams (Grant),^[42] on the other hand, the appellant, a company director, set up an ingenious scheme for the laundering of funds which may or may not have originally belonged to the company. The Privy Council held that he had rightly been convicted of a conspiracy to defraud the company by dishonestly making a secret profit. Tarling was distinguished on the basis that the directors in that case had omitted to disclose the transactions but had not taken positive steps to conceal them. Adams had taken positive and indeed elaborate steps to conceal what was happening.
3.41      The distinction drawn between Adams and Tarling suggests that even in cases where the benefit is actually obtained by an abuse of a position of trust, there is a residual requirement akin to that of deception. No one is deceived at the time when the defendant makes the gain, so the benefit is not obtained by deception; but the concealment puts up a smoke-screen to deceive those who may make enquiries after the event. Thus if the publican in Attorney-General's Reference (No 1 of 1985) had tried to conceal his side-line from his employers, and if he had been conspiring with another, he would presumably have been guilty of conspiracy to defraud.
3.42      In any event, it is clear that where a benefit is obtained by an abuse of trust, and the victim remains in complete ignorance of the loss until after the event, the benefit is not obtained by deception. In some cases there will be another statutory offence which covers the situation. For example, in Scott v Metropolitan Police Commissioner,^[43] which involved a cinema projectionist using his position to make illegal copies of films, the defendant could have been prosecuted under the predecessor of what is now section 107 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.^[44] In many instances, however, there will be no offence available other than conspiracy to defraud.

Note 1    Ashworth onPrinciples of Criminal Law p 472.    [Back]

Note 2    Law Com No 76 (1976) para 1.9.    [Back]

Note 3    See, eg, Law Com No 228 (1994) para 3.6.    [Back]

Note 4    See, eg, Ashworth on Criminal Law p 473.    [Back]

Note 5    The tort of “lawful means” conspiracy, in which an agreement to injure the claimant by doing a lawful act is actionable, is, in our view, more justifiable than conspiracy to defraud. There are two key differences. First, the tort requires the claimant to prove actual pecuniary damage so that (contrary to the criminal law position) the agreement alone is insufficient; and secondly, the claimant must show that the defendants’ predominant purpose was to injure the claimant, so that self-interested defendants will not have committed the tort. These distinctions are of great significance and might be sufficient to justify the existence of a lawful means conspiracy in tort (though we offer no view on this). Those additional elements reflecting the need respectively for harm and moral obloquy are not required for the crime of conspiracy to defraud. In fact the tort is highly controversial, and widely regarded as anomalous. See Salmond and Heuston on the Law of Torts (21st ed 1996) pp 356 – 59; Winfield and Jolowicz on Tort (15th ed 1998) pp 641 – 45; K M Stanton, The Modern Law of Tort (1994) pp 326 – 329.    [Back]

Note 6    [1982] QB 1053.    [Back]

Note 7    In view of Hinks [2001] 2 AC 241 (see paras 7.59 – 7.68 below), theft is open to the same objection, but we are not tackling the problem in that context.    [Back]

Note 8    Criminal Law (10th ed 2002), p 312.    [Back]

Note 9    The most important are to be found in the Theft Acts of 1968 and 1978, but there are many others. For example, the offences of fraudulent trading (Companies Act 1985, s 458), insider dealing (Criminal Justice Act 1993, s 52), and misleading statements and practices in the context of the financial markets (Financial Services Act 1986, s 47).    [Back]

Note 10    Griew on Theft, p 141.    [Back]

Note 11    F B Sayre, “Mens Rea” [1932] 45 HLR 974, 1020. This comment was made in the context of the law of larceny, in which it was said that “the combination of common law larceny, embezzlement, and false pretences into a single statutory larceny has proved highly advantageous” (p 1020).     [Back]

Note 12    Para 98(ii).    [Back]

Note 13    Para 97(i) and 98(i).    [Back]

Note 14    A letter to Lord Kames, dated 30 June 1759, cited by W A Holdsworth, A History of English Law (1972), vol 12, p 262.    [Back]

Note 15    Para 100.    [Back]

Note 16    [1996] AC 815, 831.    [Back]

Note 17    The Lord Chancellor, Lord Jauncey of Tullichettle, Lord Slynn of Hadley and Lord Hoffman.    [Back]

Note 18    See Preddy [1996] AC 815, 830 – 832, per Lord Goff of Chieveley.    [Back]

Note 19    A similar argument was successfully deflected in Clowes No. 2 [1994] 2 All ER 316. Clowes was actually charged was theft, but again the decision turned on the phrase “property belonging to another”. Clowes had persuaded his victims to part with their money by promising to invest it in gilts. In fact he used it for his own purposes. The standard agreements he had signed with them were unclear as to whether the victims retained a beneficial interest in their investments, with Clowes acting as a trustee, or whether they were merely his creditors. Fortunately, it was possible to read the agreements in the former light, and the Court of Appeal did so. In this way it was held that the investments did amount to “property belonging to another”.    [Back]

Note 20    [1974] 1 WLR 2.    [Back]

Note 21    [1983] Crim LR 624.    [Back]

Note 22    [1992] 1 QB 20.    [Back]

Note 23    [1993] Crim LR 788.    [Back]

Note 24    [1993] Crim LR 73.    [Back]

Note 25    3 July 1995, CA Nos 93/2627/W5, 93/2791/W5; see also [1996] Crim LR 203.    [Back]

Note 26    We considered all these cases in our money transfers report, which was produced in response toPreddy. The Commission was already committed to reviewing the law of dishonesty (our conspiracy to defraud report, paras 1.16 – 1.19), but in the meantime it recommended the urgent enactment of another specific deception offence, to fill the lacuna opened up byPreddy. The recommendations were swiftly followed, and the offence of obtaining a money transfer by deception was created by the Theft (Amendment) Act 1996, which amended section 15 of the Theft Act 1968. This, however, was recommended as an urgent solution to an immediate problem. Commercial practices change continually, and it is highly likely that new procedures will give rise to further challenges to the Theft Act offences, as we recognised in Consultation Paper No 155, paras 7.4 – 7.7.    [Back]

Note 27    Theft Act 1968, s 20(2).    [Back]

Note 28    [1993] AC 442.    [Back]

Note 29    [2001] 1 WLR 1172.    [Back]

Note 30    Theft Act 1978, s 3(1).    [Back]

Note 31    Theft Act 1978, s 1(1).    [Back]

Note 32    Para 1.17.    [Back]

Note 33    See para 3.13 above.    [Back]

Note 34    Para 87.    [Back]

Note 35    [1977] AC 177.    [Back]

Note 36    [1982] AC 449.    [Back]

Note 37    See, for example, Smith on Theft, paras 4 – 19.    [Back]

Note 38    See, for example, Scott v Metropolitan Police Commissioner [l975] AC 819.    [Back]

Note 39    See, for example, the cases referred to in paras 2.17 – 2.22 above.    [Back]

Note 40    [1986] QB 491.    [Back]

Note 41    (1978) 70 Cr App R 77.    [Back]

Note 42    [1995] 1 WLR 52.    [Back]

Note 43    [l975] AC 819.    [Back]

Note 44    Copyright Act 1956, s 21.    [Back]