The first part of this blogpost discussed the interpretation given to the right of phonogram producers under Article 2(c) of Directive 2001/29/EC (InfoSoc Directive) and Article 9(1)(b) of Directive 2006/115 (Rental and Lending Rights Directive) by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU or Court) in Pelham. Contrary to the Opinion of Advocate…
The Estonian Authors’ Society (EAÜ) sued Tallinn Concert Club OÜ and Worex Music OÜ, who jointly organised two public concerts but did not acquire licences for the public performance of copyrighted works. The court satisfied the claim in full and emphasised that the author cannot exercise his or her rights (therefore cannot legally waive his…
The Estonian Authors’ Society (EAÜ) sued Tallinn Concert Club OÜ and Worex Music OÜ, who had jointly organised a public concert without having a licence for the public performance of copyrighted works. The court held that the defendants must be held solidary liable for the illegal public performance of copyrighted works, as the obligation to…
On 17 May 2019 the new Directive (EU) 2019/790 on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market was officially published (DSM Directive). Article 17 (ex-Article 13) is one of its most controversial provisions. As discussed previously on this blog, Article 17 is an extremely complex provision: it suffers from problems of internal consistency…
Following the CJEU’s judgment of 12 September 2019, the German national related right in favour of press publishers established in 2013 is unenforceable for formal reasons. But a new related right will be introduced shortly with the implementation of the DSM Directive. The competition law issues brought up in Germany will remain for the EU…
Whether the parties to an agreement had intended to transfer the copyrights as part of its overall transfer of intellectual property was a question of material fact that should not have been decided by the court on summary judgment. An agreement between two affiliated companies did not unambiguously prohibit the transfer of copyrights as part…
On 29 July the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) finally rendered its long-awaited judgment in Case C-476/17, Pelham v Hütter and Schneider-Esleben., together with its judgments on two other cases: Case C-516/17, Spiegel Online GmbH v Volker Beck and Case C-469/17, Funke Medien NRW GmbH v Bundesrepublik Deutschland. All three cases are…
Part I of this blogpost discussed the first paragraph of Article 17(7) DSM Directive, according to which the cooperation between online content sharing service providers (OCSSPs) and rightholders cannot render unavailable uploaded content which does not infringe copyright or neighbouring rights. Part II addresses the second paragraph of Article 17(7) which is instead addressed at…
Blockchain is certainly a hot topic. For creative industries, Blockchain has the potential to improve licensing of rights as well as tracking of infringements. It also has potential in arts funding. Some artists and art organizations have already tried to tokenize art works and artists in order to attract crowd funding. The online platform Maecenas…
Article 17 of the adopted DSM Directive requires that so-called online content-sharing service providers (OCSSPs) either obtain use licenses from rightholders or, failing that, enforce copyright ex ante by preventing uploads. At the same time, according to Article 17(7) any agreements between rightholders and OCSSPs cannot affect the availability of content created under the limitations,…
