The judgment of the High Court of Justice of London of 17 December 2025 provides important clarification on the boundaries of joint authorship in scientific publications, applying in a rigorous manner the principles developed in the well-known case Kogan v. Martin.
The dispute arose from an academic research project conducted at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (“EPFL”), within the framework of which Dr Djokic published a scientific article without indicating the head of the laboratory, Professor Boghossian, as a co-author. The latter claimed joint ownership of the work, arguing that she had made a decisive contribution to the structure and content of the paper, and brought proceedings against the publisher for copyright infringement.
In dismissing the claim in its entirety, the High Court relied on the criteria established in the aforementioned Kogan case, in which it had been clarified that joint authorship requires the presence of four cumulative elements: collaboration based on a common design; a genuinely authorial contribution, that is to say creative rather than merely technical; the absence of separable contributions; and a contribution capable of expressing the author’s own intellectual creation. That decision also marked a significant step away from a formalistic approach to authorship, making clear that it is not decisive to identify the person who physically drafted the text. In particular, the Court specified that those who contribute to the development of the plot, characters or narrative structure may qualify as authors, provided that they exercise free and expressive choices, while excluding that mere activities of editing, revision, criticism or support may carry authorial relevance where they are not embedded in a genuine creative collaboration.
It was precisely on this theoretical framework that the High Court grounded its decision in the Boghossian case. The judge emphasised that, in scientific publications, the scope for individual creative choices is inherently limited: the structure of the article, the organisation of results and the language employed comply with consolidated standards and technical constraints that restrict the expression of the author’s “personality”. In this context, the definition of the paper’s framework, methodological suggestions and editorial corrections were not considered sufficient to amount to an authorial contribution in the proper sense.
With specific regard to the burden of proof, Professor Boghossian failed to demonstrate, through the production of annotated drafts or intermediate versions of the document, the existence of creative textual contributions attributable to her own intellectual initiative. In the absence of such documentary evidence, the Court ruled out the recognition of joint authorship, stressing that the claim of an indistinct contribution cannot be upheld without a concrete evidentiary basis.
The judgment of 17 December 2025 thus constitutes an important application of the principles articulated in Kogan v. Martin to the field of scientific research, clarifying that participation in a common project, academic supervision or technical input are not, in themselves, sufficient to establish rights of joint authorship. The decision calls upon researchers, universities and publishers to ensure greater clarity in the definition of roles and confirms the centrality of proof of individual creativity as an indispensable prerequisite for copyright protection.
