Josef K. was minding his own business when one morning, even though he knew he had done nothing wrong, he was arrested. This was the beginning of his trial. In his masterpiece entitled The Trial, Franz Kafka tells, among many things, the story of a man trying to interact with a preposterous system of justice….
The right of distribution is the least controversial of the three exclusive rights contained in the Information Society Directive (InfoSoc Directive). Yet, every now and then the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) is asked to re-examine its scope. With far less interpretative imagination compared with the right of communication to the public,…
Estonian Authors’ Society (EAÜ), a collecting society that administers local and foreign authors’ economic rights in Estonia, sued SIA ADEONA, a Latvian music concert organizer, who organized a public concert in Estonia without acquiring a license for the public performance nor paying any license fee. In contrast to previous Estonian case law (EAÜ v. XXX,…
The Court reached the conclusion that since the cumulative criteria that formed the necessary condition for assessing “communication to the public” were not fulfilled, there was no communication of sound recordings to the public when a car rental company rented out rental cars equipped with a built-in radio. Consequently, Nordisk Biluthyrning was not liable to…
The Spanish Supreme Court dismissed the cassation appeal filed by the Spanish affiliate of the American group IMS HEALTH against the judgment of the Provincial Appellate Court of Madrid ordering them to pay damages of 5 million euros for misappropriating and selling part of the content of a database developed by the claimant company. INFONIS,…
This post was first published on the Kluwer Trademark Blog. Earlier this year, the Court of Appeal of Milan upheld a 2015 ruling by the Court of Milan which recognized copyright protection of the concept store of Kiko, the Italian make-up brand, and blocked competitor Wycon from using similar store decor in its shops. (Court…
1. Introduction In September 2016, the European Commission published its proposal for a new Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market, including its controversial draft Article 13. The main driver behind this provision is what has become known as the ‘value gap’, i.e. the alleged mismatch between the value that online sharing platforms extract…
According to the Vienna Commercial Court, YouTube is not a mere host provider. Host providers are privileged, and shall not be liable for information stored if the provider does not have actual knowledge of illegal activity or information, and the provider immediately removes or blocks information when it becomes aware of the illegal content. According…
As the endgame for the negotiations on the long-awaited new European Directive on copyright in the Digital Single Market is finally on, the debate focuses very much on article 13 of the proposed directive. A lot has been published already about the consequences of this proposal for the future of ‘the-internet-as-we-know-it’, but what are its…
On 18 July, the High Court (Arnold J) in The Football Association Premier League Ltd v British Telecommunications Plc & Ors [2018] EWHC 1828 (Ch) granted an extension of a 2017 order requiring BT and others to block access to streaming services which gave unauthorised access to live Premier League football matches during the 2018/19…
