The European Commission has referred six Member States (Bulgaria, Denmark, Finland, Latvia, Poland and Portugal) to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) for failure to notify complete transposition measures on copyright in the Digital Single Market (Directive (EU) 2019/790) (CDSM Directive). This follows its decision last year to send reasoned opinions to 13…

The Latvian Supreme Court has recently ruled on the determination of pecuniary and non-pecuniary damages for copyright infringement in a case where the copyright works had been used for informatory purposes. Case No. SKC-[B]/2016 was adjudicated in a closed hearing, as a result of which the number of the case file and the date of…

In this case, brought by a Latvian collective management organisation (AKKA/LAA) against the Latvian Government, the European Court of Human Rights held as follows: 1. The protection of intellectual property rights, including the protection of copyright and the economic interests deriving from it, falls within the scope of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 of…

When considering whether a collective management organisation had abused its dominant position by imposing unreasonably high licence fees, it was justifiable to compare its fees with the fees in other markets. These markets should be comparable to the Latvian market in order to achieve the correct outcome. As well as having a similar gross domestic…

The Court rejected B’s application to establish his authorship of a film as a legal fact.  Under Copyright Law no registration or other formalities are required to enjoy copyright protection. It follows that a person owns copyright upon creating a work and there are no special documents certifying the authorship. Therefore a court cannot turn into a…

The KluwerCopyrightBlog is part of Kluwer’s IP Kluwer IP Law portfolio. Whereas the blog serves as a platform where scholars and practioners can share their informed opinions on specific aspects of IP law and jurisprudence, the related Kluwer Copyright Cases Database aims to accumulate important case law in the field of copyright in one database….

“The Cabinet of Ministers has failed to assess impact of technology development onto blank tapes and equipment to be used for reproduction and thus imposable with blank tape levy.” (Judgement Constitutional Court, 14.3). Last year, the Satversmes tiesa, the Constitutional Court of Latvia, had to deal with the first copyright case since its establishment in…

“The Radio Company cannot be declared guilty for breach of copyright (illegal use of musical works), although no written agreement has been concluded. In Latvia, criteria for stipulation of the amount of remuneration are not given in the Copyright Law.” In 2006 the Autortiesību un komunicēšanās konsultāciju aģentūra / Latvijas Autoru apvienība, the Copyright and Communication…