In a recent judgment, following the preliminary Infopaq-rulings of the European Court of Justice, the Danish Supreme Court ruled that extracts of newspaper articles comprising no more than 11 words can be works protected by copyright. The use of extracts that are the results of a process of data capture undertaken by the media analysis company Infopaq International A/S (now Infomedia) constitutes copyright infringement, unless prior consent from right holders has been obtained.

The judgement of the Danish Supreme Court is the outcome of an eight-year dispute between Infopaq and Danske Dagblades Forening (Danish Daily Newspapers Association). The core of the dispute concerned Infopaq’s righ [...]

“He decides to write an alternative super hero tale, and uses his partner Thomas’ identity. So the real Thomas turns into the fictive super hero in the book.”

This is a story that started out with two partners doing art related projects together. One day one of them, Claus Beck-Nielsen,  decides to write a book about a man who wants to save America from the spiral of descending moral and growing evilness, which according to his mind had evolved among the Americans. He decides to write an alternative super hero tale, and uses his partner Thomas ’ identity  (Thomas Altheimer , born Thomas Skade-Rasmussen Strøbech, a Danish artist), describing his real family, wife job, incidents etc [...]

In its recent judgement in the Auto24.ee-case, the Estonian Supreme Court established that an authors’ agreement for assigning economical copyrights is deemed to be signed when the user of database accepts the general conditions imposed by the database owner.

According to Article 49(1) of the Estonian Copyright Act though, an author’s contract shall be entered into in writing. The grant of a non-exclusive licence may also be made in a format which can be reproduced in writing. The referred Article 49(1) is imperative.

The “Auto24″ database, owned by the plaintiff AS Sanoma Baltics, contains sales advertisements of motor vehicles that are accompanied with corresponding photos made by the us [...]

Estonian Supreme Court, 7 February 2012, Case No3-2-1-155-11,  Herlitz PBS AG vs. Realister OÜ (plaintiff in the prededing proceeding).

The Estonian Supreme Court found in its recent judgement in the Realister case that the presumption of authorship as laid down in the Sections 4(6) and 29(1) of the Estonian Copyright Act (hereinafter referred to as the CA) is only applicable in case the right holder relying on the presumption of authorship is a natural person, who has created the work, not a legal person who has obtained the economical rights under the law or a contract.

In this case the owner of the authors’ economical rights is a legal person that claims to have economical copyrights [...]

Finland: Finreactor I, Supreme Court (Korkein oikeus), 30 June 2010.

Filesharing: The defendants were administrators of the Finreactor BitTorrent file sharing network. The networks’ users could illegally download copyrighted works. The network was built so that the files were not available on the Finreactor’s site but resided on users’ own computers. Finreactor had a tracker that kept track of which user had which files available for downloading.The administrators had removed torrent-links, given warnings and banned users from the site. The administrators were not aware of the content of individual files.The court held that the administrators’ criminal liability was not limited by the techni [...]

DENMARK – An end user of the Direct Connect file sharing network was found liable for copyright infringements. However, the Supreme Court did not agree with the right holders (respondents) that the extent of the infringements was sufficiently documented and overturned the evidence (a list of files) provided by right holders. Also, the Supreme Court found that economical damages for online copyright infringements (internet piracy) cannot be based on a calculation of the remuneration claim and thus overruled the so-called “double damages” principle that had been common practise by courts and administrative bodies up until this ruling. The High Court and District Court had come to another resul [...]

In the appeal of a case concerning allegations of infringement of IP rights in live football statistics sites, the Court of Appeal rejected the claimant’s copyright claim, affirming the high standard of subsistence in a database under Article 3(1) which must go beyond ‘mere data’ to involve some ‘creative skill’. Concerning the sui generis right, the Court of Appeal referred the question of where the making available of a database protected by a sui generis right under the Database Directive takes place to the CJEU, asking where the infringing acts of ‘extraction’ and ‘re-utilisation’ take place.

For the full text of the case clickhere
A summary of this case will be posted on www.KluwerIPCas [...]

Kitchin J granted an order for security for costs under rule 24.6 CPR against the claimant in a copyright infringement case. While remaining sensitive to the right of access to the court of the claimant and acknowledging that security for costs should only rarely be ordered solely where the case appears weak, the judge considered an order necessary, the claimant being a nominal claimant (satisfying rule 25.13(2)(f)), with poor prospects of success and whose behaviour demonstrated a want of good faith.

For the full text of the case clickhere
A summary of this case will be posted on www.KluwerIPCases.com

The use of a photograph of a politician with a child, in combination with a satirical text, in a self-advertisement of a news magazine, is not covered by the freedom of satire when the satire does not concern daily political events but is merely commercially self-serving. Furthermore, the implication of a political relationship between the people pictured conflicts with the child’s right to protection of its portrait. According to the Austrian Supreme Court, commercial advertisements also fall under the regime of Article 10 ECHR. The protection of a person’s portrait also applies to the usage in advertisements.

A summary of this case will be posted on www.KluwerIPCases.com

The variation of the Austrian National Anthem by setting it to a modernised “rock-version” of the classic tune and by changing the line “You are home to great sons” to “You are home to great sons and daughters” for use in an information campaign by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Education, Arts and Culture, does not infringe the rights of the copyright holder. According to the Supreme Court, the use by a Federal Ministry in an information campaign is covered by the contractual assignment of rights by the original lyrics’ author to the Republic of Austria and does not constitute a “commercial use”. The textual changes leave the meaning of the lyrics untouched, they fit the style of the rhy [...]