The European Copyright Society posted an opinion on selected aspects of the proposed Data Act. The aim of the Data Act’s sui generis clause (art. 35) to reduce the availability of IP rights over some datasets is welcome. However, its drafting is flawed and risks creating even more fragmentation in the laws of Member States….

On 15 December 2020, the European Commission submitted a proposal for a Regulation on a Single Market For Digital Services (Digital Services Act, DSA) and amending Directive 2000/31/EC. In November 2021, the Council of the European Union reached agreement on an amended version of this proposal, and on 20 December 2021, the European Parliament’s Committee…

On 3 June 2021, the CJEU handed down its judgment in CV-Online Latvia v Melons (with Ilešič as a reporting judge), a case involving Melons’ infringement of CV-Online Latvia’s database of job advertisements arguably protected by the sui generis right. The facts of the case are expertly described by Tatiana Synodinou in her comment on the…

In Part 1 of this blog post we addressed certain criticisms from our esteemed colleagues Jan Bernt Nordemann and Julian Waiblinger to our 2019 working paper and the German implementation proposal of Article 17 of the Copyright in the Digital Single Market (CDSM) Directive. In this Part 2, we argue why the latter proposal is…

In a recent two part post on this blog, our esteemed colleagues, Jan Bernt Nordemann and Julian Waiblinger, argued that our 2019 working paper and the German implementation proposal reading of Article 17 Copyright in the Digital Single Market (CDSM) Directive are wrong when they treat that entire provision as lex specialis to Article 3…

The Digital Single Market is a widely shared aspiration. The recently adopted copyright reform is one of the EU’s central interventions to re-arrange online creative markets. The expectation is that the newly created rules will facilitate fairer attribution of value where it is due. Since the narrative behind the legislation was dramatic, the expectations are…

EU copyright reform is upon is. Once again, the Member States will need to develop their own implementations of a new piece of European copyright law. This time, the task is far from easy. Due to political turbulence in the legislative process, the resulting text of the Directive is extremely complex. Because of this, there…

Internet access providers should be compensated for website blocking requested by IP right owners. In a nutshell, this is what the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom ruled back in June. The entire saga, however, has much wider implications and should be properly considered beyond the UK borders. Background The Cartier case arose from a…

Over the course of the last couple of months, we witnessed an outburst of creativity concerning the wording of Art 13 of the Digital Single Market Directive (‘the Directive’). Last week, the Estonian Presidency tabled a compromise proposal (here – thanks to Statewatch) for the meeting of the Working Party on Intellectual Property that takes…

The last two weeks were truly hard for the future of the digital economy in Europe. First, the European Commission officially declared its regulatory capture. Then the CJEU provided us with a great set of hyperlinking clarifications for their daily use. Now it is completely clear, who, when, and how one can link to avoid…