Besides tulips, cheese, football and other recreational matters, the Netherlands are famous for its copyright protection of non-original writings. Geschriftenbescherming, as the Dutch call this legal anomaly (and only they know how to pronounce it), is a remnant of an ancient eighteenth-century printer’s right that lives on until this day in the Dutch Copyright Act of 1912. Deviating from the idea of author’s right (droit d’auteur) to which Dutch law otherwise subscribes, the Dutch Act protects ‘writings’ that do not meet the test of originality. Article 10 (1), first item, of the Act, mentions as protected subject matter ‘books, brochures, newspapers, periodicals and all other wri [...]
“The ECJ does not go as far as the Advocate General, and observes that given the ubiquitous nature of the content of a website, the mere fact that the website is accessible in a national territory is not sufficient to consider that the operator of that site is performing an act of re-utilisation caught by the national law.”
On 18 October 2012, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) rendered its judgment in Football Dataco II (C-173/11), in which it ruled that data is re-utilised in a Member State, the meaning of Article 7 of the Directive 96/9, if there is evidence that the alleged infringer intended to target members of the public in that territory.
The Court of Appeal of England and Wale [...]
On September 23, 1912, the Dutch Copyright Act – Auteurswet – was enacted. A century after its enactment the Dutch law is one of the world’s oldest ‘living’ acts of the author’s rights tradition. While the Act has seen many small and large amendments since its adoption in 1912, it has never been thoroughly revised, so its conception and basic structure have remained essentially intact.
On August 31, 2012, the Dutch Copyright Society (Vereniging voor Auteursrecht) will celebrate the Act’s hundredth anniversary with a large international conference to be held in Amsterdam at the beautiful Royal Tropical Institute (Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen). The conference will look at [...]
On 21 June 2012, Advocate General Cruz Villalón delivered his opinion in Case C-173/11: Football Dataco Ltd and Ors v. Sportradar GmbH and Ors regarding a question where the use of the content of a database protected by sui generis database right takes place.
It has been four months since the Court of Justice delivered its judgment in Case C-604/10 Football Dataco Ltd, and Ors. v Yahoo! And Ors. (see E.Derclaye’s comment here) holding that inter alia that “significant labour and skill of the author of the database cannot as such justify the protection of it by copyright under Directive 96/9, if that labour and that skill do not express any originality in the selection or arrangement of [...]
Summary & comment by Dr. Estelle Derclaye, Associate Professor and Reader in Intellectual Property law, University of Nottingham, School of Law.
“The crux of the judgment comes at paragraph 42 when the court clearly states that skill and labour in the selection or arrangement of the data, even if significant, is not sufficient as such to trigger copyright protection.”
This morning, the Court of Justice delivered its judgement in Case C-604/10, Football Dataco & others v. Yahoo UK ! & others and followed Advocate General Mengozzi’s opinion.The case concerned, yet again, football fixtures lists. The claimant (Football Dataco) argued that the lists were protected by copyright as databases [...]
Data creation, intellectual creation and creativity in the world of databases: The Advocate’s General Opinion in the Football Dataco Ltd v. Yahoo! Uk Limited Case and its potential impact in database copyright.
What is a database? Are database copyright protection and database sui generis protection completely independent? What is the creativity level for asserting that the selection of the disposition of a database contents is the «author’s own intellectual creation» or is creativity not a prerequisite for database copyright protection? Fifteen years after the adoption of the Database Directive, this odd creature in the copyright world, these questions are far from being resolved. E [...]
UK: High Court Chancery Division, 09-11-2011: Forensic Telecommunications Services Ltd v. Chief Constable of West
Copyright does not subsist in a list of permanent memory absolute (“PM Abs”) addresses of mobile phones that are used to extract data from mobile phones in forensic investigations. There may have been an expenditure of skill, labour and judgement but it has not been of the right kind. If copyright did subsist in the list, the defendants would have infringed copyright by substantially reproducing the list. Fair dealing defences would not apply. However, the list is protected by the database right due to the investment made in obtaining the data. By posting the list on the Phone-fo [...]
By Gaetano Dimita
The football data clashes continue. This time, the Court of Appeals decided to bring an important aspect of the Dataco case (as mentioned here) to the attention of the Court of Justice:
Hearing the appeal and cross appeal on Football Dataco Ltd, The Scottish Premier League Limited, The Scottish Football League Limited and PA Sport UK Limited v Sportradar GmbH & and Sportradar AG [2010] EWHC 2911 (Ch), the Court of Appeals (Lords Justices Laws, Jacob and Wilson) decided to refer the following questions to the Court of Justice of the European Union for a preliminary ruling:
‘Where a party uploads data from a database protected by sui generis right under Directive 96/9/EC o [...]
Football listings have hit the UK again, this time with an “original” twist.Disputes surrounding football lists never seem to go out of fashion. On 9 December 2010, the High Court yet again was faced with issues of IP protection of football listings and other related statistical football information, subject matter somewhere on the borderline between copyright and the database sui generis right. A UK provider of football listings and live football scores took various defendants to court for allegedly infringing copyright and database rights.
The decision by the High Court of Justice considers, in particular, the availability of copyright law to databases but decided to leave that questi [...]
