“It is not the European Parliament that officially determines the scope of the negotiating mandate, although its position now can certainly give a sign regarding the political winds that await the TTIP agreement.”

The EU and the US have been holding talks on a trade agreement that goes by the name of Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). Apparently, it is both parties’ intention to include a chapter on intellectual property, which has caused a lot of ACTA-related bells to ring. Regardless of the (de)merits of including an IP chapter in the TTIP, the specific mandate regarding copyright aspects is (still) unknown.

The Committee of International Trade of the European Par [...]

“The most obvious one is the fact that, if enhanced cooperation is permitted in the area of creation of unitary titles, then a similar solution could be envisaged for copyright.”

Last month, the CJEU came to a decision in joined cases C-274/11 and C-295/11, where the claims of Spain and Italy against enhanced cooperation for the creation of a unitary patent were dismissed. Did this blogger just take the wrong exit on the IP interstate and arrived in patent city? Not really. While this is a patent decision, some of its splinters might indeed land in copyright town.

In a nutshell, 25 Member States of the EU decided to establish enhanced cooperation between them in the context of creating a [...]

“This decision is significant insofar as it should impact the legislative process regarding the Proposed Directive “on collective management of copyright and related rights and multi-territorial licensing of rights in musical works for online uses.”

On April 12, 2013, the General Court of the European Union ended a 5 year wait and delivered its judgement in Case T–442/08 CISAC v. European Commission (CISAC 2013), as well as in twenty-two other related cases involving a like number of European collecting societies (see Press release No 43/13). In it the Court partially annulled the Commission’s decision of July 16, 2008 (CISAC 2008). This blog post will focus on the CISAC 2013 decision [...]

“The road to Marrakesh is open but is not paved with roses and the outcome of the negotiations is awaited with both hope and reservations. “

While some statistics demonstrate that only about 5% of all published books are available in accessible formats for print disabled people globally, 2013 promises to be a landmark year in the combat against this scarcity of reading sources for visually impaired people. A scarcity that is often referred to as ‘book famine’.

On April, 20, 2013 the Informal Session and Special Session of the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) is expected to have prepared a revised and maybe final version of the draft text of a Treaty to F [...]

“However, in none of the studied countries, e-lending activities rely on a statutory copyright or lending right exception.”

By Kelly Breemen and Vicky Breemen, Institute for Information Law, Amsterdam (IViR).

Public libraries in various countries are increasingly involved in e-lending practices. Thus far, these practices are largely based on contractual agreements between the parties concerned rather than on a copyright exception or limitation. But why would public libraries not be allowed to lend e-books under the same conditions that apply to physical books, that is, without prior authorization but against equitable remuneration?

In the context of plans for developing a national digita [...]

“Yet, in contrast to the legislative measures that had been previously contemplated, this deal is only of a stand-alone character and will not affect the situation of smaller aggregators.”

A while back we reported on the clash between search giant Google and media organisations in, among other countries, France over the former’s news aggregating service Google News. French publishing associations have been demanding the introduction of a ‘snippeting right’ in France which would oblige content aggregators to obtain a license, and thus share revenue, for the privilege of display links to their articles. The underlying idea is that those who profit from the distribution of content sho [...]

The Polish Ministry of Administration and Digitisation has initiated discussion on the law providing free access to public resources.

The Ministry has made available on its webpage a document entitled “Draft Guidelines for the Proposal of the Act on Open Public Resources” and has invited interested parties to comment. Thus a process of “open access by law” has begun. It has been long thought that public resources of various kinds should be, when possible, made available on the internet for free along the motto: what has been paid for by public money is public property. Usually such initiatives have been voluntary and have thus relied on either good will or political pressure. Now, ho [...]

Breaking news. More than a year after Congress repealed the private copying levy, the Spanish Government agreed yesterday to begin paying taxes on blank media such as DVDs, CDs, pen drives and camera phones through a budget allotment.

The Ministry of Culture would be in charged of determining each year how much should be allotted to cover the excise tax, which would be introduced to compensate artists who saw their royalties shrink due to the ease of online file sharing and downloads.

In 2011, Congress repealed the law, which had been severely criticized by the European Union Court of Justice, who said it was not in line with EU legislation.

By paying the tax through budget allotments, the c [...]

“According to the current formulation of the draft law, material quoted by humans for commentary and analysis, as opposed to that automatically selected by a computer, may be copied freely.”

The link wars have once again broken out in Europe. In August, the German cabinet gave its backing to a draft law allowing news publishers to collect compensation for the republication of headlines and the introductory sentences of articles by aggregators and search engines. Under the proposal, which would protect content for one year, news publishers would be able to license out snippeting rights for a royalty and start proceedings against those found to infringe their newfound neighbouring right. T [...]

“The Polish Parliament is of the opinion the draft proposal does not adequately explain why these goals can be “better” realised on the EU level. “

Friday, October 12th 2012 was packed with action in the Polish Parliament (Sejm), because on that day the prime minister subject his government to the vote of confidence and delivered a speech explaining his plans and endeavours for the next three years. The turnout in the often empty house was therefore extraordinary.

Amid this political turmoil (in fact just after the Parliament gave its vote of confidence to the government) the Sejm passed almost unanimously a resolution declaring the proposal for a directive on collective rights managemen [...]