Introduction In a decision from 12 September 2018, the French Court of Cassation (hereafter: “the Court”) defines the notion of fixation of the performance of a performer in order to determine the date of such fixation for several works. This decision is particularly interesting as it deals with an issue that has mostly been disregarded…

At the end of 2017, HADOPI published an important survey on its activities for the period 2016-2017. It gives interesting and useful information on the graduated response created by the French legislator to fight online infringement directly at the source, by educating internet users and dissuading them from unlawfully downloading and/or sharing (and if possible…

The French Supreme Court held that the costs relating to the blocking measures ordered by the courts are strictly necessary for the preservation of the intellectual property rights and that the courts may order the internet service providers and search engine providers to bear such costs. Case date: 6 July 2017 Court: Court of Cassation of France,…

Following an interlocutory question from the French Council of State, in a dispute concerning the legality of the decree of 27 February 2013 on the application of the law of 1 March 2012 on the digitisation of out-of-print books of the 20th century, the Court of Justice of the European Union (Case C-301-15) rightfully stated that…

A full summary of this case has been published on Kluwer IP Law and the case has been discussed on the Kluwer Copyright Blog here. The CJEU held that Article 2(a) and Article 3(1) of Directive 2001/29 preclude national legislation that gives an approved collecting society the right to authorise the digital reproduction and communication to the…

To ensure you don’t miss out on interesting IP law developments reported on our other IP blogs, we will, on a regular basis, provide you with an overview of the top 3 most-read posts from each of our IP law blogs.  Here are the top posts from June, July and August. Top 3 Kluwer Copyright…

A full summary of this case has been published on Kluwer IP Law The Supreme Court held that even in cases where many photographs are involved, the courts must carry out a separate examination of each individual photograph in order to assess their respective originality, if necessary by grouping them by common characteristics. To make…

On 21 May 2015, the IP specialist chamber of the High Court of First Instance of Paris handed down one of its worst rulings in copyright law: in breach of the most basic EU and French copyright law rules, it refused copyright protection to a famous photograph of Jimi Hendrix (reproduced above), taken by Gered…

From the Celestial Jukebox to AI. We have now reached the “Celestial Jukebox” predicted by Prof. Goldstein,[1] and have even gone well beyond with the rise of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. These key issues were at the heart of the annual IP conference organised by the University of Geneva on February 22, 2017 (programme…