Judgment nº208/2021 of Madrid Commercial Court nº16 (December 20th, 2021) Context and facts This case concerns a dispute between the collecting management organisation CEDRO[1] and GOOGLE DISCOVER for non-payment of fair compensation for the limitation established in article 32.2 (now abrogated by the implementation of the CDSM Directive[2]) of the Spanish Copyright Act (SCA) between…

In the recent case of Estonian Performers Union (EEL) v vs. MTÜ Urban Style, the Estonian Supreme Court examined the circumstances that should be taken into account in determining the amount of the equitable remuneration that phonogram producers and performers are entitled to claim if a phonogram published for commercial purposes or a reproduction thereof…

In an article recently published in the JIPITEC (and available here), I examined parts of the ongoing copyright reform process drawing on a case study on the Fair Internet for Performers Campaign. This process has been characterised by strong discourses centred on ‘fairness’. Using discourse analysis, I found the concept of fairness to be mostly…

The Tallinn Circuit Court finally and definitively determined the action in the “blank tape levy” court case. This landmark court case had been pending since February 2013, when the authors’, performers’ and phonogram producers’ collecting societies initially filed their complaint against the Government of the Republic of Estonia. During the litigation, the case was reviewed…

The Supreme Court confirmed that performing artists (performers) have a mandatory right to equitable remuneration from broadcasters or movie producers as consideration for the statutory assignment of most of their rights to broadcasters and producers.  Moreover, the Court declared that in award calculation two methods of fixing the amount of remuneration are possible: either as…

A full report of this case has been published on Kluwer IP Law. In this landmark case, the Estonian Supreme Court analysed in detail the legal issues relating to equitable remuneration for the private copying exemption, concentrating on the legality of the regulation on the “blank tape levy” which was established in 2006, and had…

In a judgment of 17 March 2016, the Cour de cassation, the French Supreme Court, ruled that the judicial courts are required to assess and award the remuneration for private copying in situations where one of the decisions of the Commission in charge of setting the fair compensation has been annulled. A full summary of…

The question referred to the CJEU in the Austro-Mechana case (C-572/14) was whether a claim for payment of fair compensation for private copying, as per Article 5(2)(b) of Directive 2001/29, can be considered to be a matter relating to tort, delict or quasi-delict and, therefore, whether Article 5(3) of Regulation 44/2001 on jurisdiction in civil…

The Dutch Copyright Contract Law entered into force on July 1st 2015. According to the legislator it aims to strengthen the position of the author and performer in exploitation agreements (see Explanatory Memorandum under 1, 1st paragraph), and will ideally lead to them receiving a fairer share of the profit from their work (see Memorandum…

Article 3(1) of Directive 2001/29/EC (the Infosoc Directive) must be interpreted as meaning that a broadcasting organisation does not carry out an act of “communication to the public” when it transmits its programme-carrying signals exclusively to signal distributors without those signals being accessible to the public (the “direct injection” technique). This judgment by the European…