Legal enforcement of open source software license violations, in particular violations of the General Public License (GPL), has been established in Germany for quite some time. Back in 2004, the Regional Court of Munich I granted an injunction confirming copyright infringement on the basis of a violation of the terms of the GPLv2 (judgment of…

Over the course of the last couple of months, we witnessed an outburst of creativity concerning the wording of Art 13 of the Digital Single Market Directive (‘the Directive’). Last week, the Estonian Presidency tabled a compromise proposal (here – thanks to Statewatch) for the meeting of the Working Party on Intellectual Property that takes…

A full summary of this case has been published on Kluwer IP Law. The Estonian Authors’ Society (EAÜ) is a collecting society that administers authors’ economic rights in Estonia. The EAÜ sued a music concert organiser who had not acquired a corresponding licence for public performance of copyright works and had not paid a licence…

Microsoft Corp. established, as a matter of law, that several California retailers infringed the software giant’s copyrights and trademarks by selling 60 units of software, each of which included a counterfeit copy of Microsoft Windows 7 or Microsoft Office 2007, the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco has determined. A judgment against the retailers…

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 EU law, particularly Article 5(2)(b) of Directive 2001/29, precludes national legislation that subjects exemption from payment of the private copying levy for producers and importers of…

Blockchain technology seems to be all the rage nowadays. In simple terms, blockchain enables parties who do not know or trust each other to maintain a common set of records without the need for a trusted third party intermediary. Bitcoin, the first major successful cryptocurrency, uses blockchain to keep track of the supply and flow…

Introduction On 30th March 2017, the Regional Administrative Court of Lazio (“TAR Lazio”) had the last word, at least from a domestic perspective, on the validity of the AGCOM (Italian Communication Authority) Regulation on copyright enforcement in electronic communications networks (“AGCOM Regulation” or simply the “Regulation”). This finding of validity is the final step in…

The Spanish Supreme Court has recently ruled on the concept of originality in respect of architectural works, and for the first time has established clear and specific guidelines for applying copyright protection to works of this nature. The situation which gave rise to the proceedings is very common in the architectural sector. An architect (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 March and April. Top 3 Kluwer Copyright Blog…

Over the last decade, in particular, the English courts have shown a strong resolve to tackle online infringements of IP rights, and also an ability and willingness to be flexible in the remedies which they can provide to assist IP rights holders in tackling the ever evolving challenges which new technologies have created. A recent…