When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. This must have been the key insight at the Polish Culture and National Heritage Ministry when the new administration took over and discovered that more than 2.5 years after the implementation deadline, Poland still had to implement the provisions of the 2019 Copyright in the Digital Single Market…

The belated Portuguese transposition of the CDSM Directive was finally published in the Portuguese Official Journal (Diário da República) on the 19th of June 2023. The approved Decree-Law 47/2023 to a large extent corresponds to a legislative project (Project 52/XV), which, in turn, was a variation of a previous project (Project 114/XIV) that failed due…

As testified by collections such as those of Trinity College’s Old Library, copying and illustrating manuscripts by hand was such a well-developed practice among members of mediaeval religious orders in Ireland that two Christian saints – Columba and Finnian – ended up having the first recorded copyright dispute in the Western world’s history. The most…

The European Commission has referred six Member States (Bulgaria, Denmark, Finland, Latvia, Poland and Portugal) to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) for failure to notify complete transposition measures on copyright in the Digital Single Market (Directive (EU) 2019/790) (CDSM Directive). This follows its decision last year to send reasoned opinions to 13…

Introductory remarks The Greek legislator transposed Directive (EU) 2019/790 (CDSMD) with considerable delay, enacting L. 4996/2022 in November 2022 (ΦΕΚ Α´ 2022/24.11.2022), which amended the basic Greek Copyright Law (L. 2121/1993 on “Copyright, Related Rights and Cultural Matters”) as well as L. 4481/2017 on “Collective Management of Copyright and Related Rights” (ΦΕΚ Α’ 100/20.7.2017). Among…

In the last year, the German Copyright Act has experienced what is probably its most substantial reform since it first came into force in 1966. The reason for this was the implementation of the DSM Copyright Directive 2019/790/EU (DSMD) and Directive 2019/789/EU (Online SatCab Directive). Secondly, the legislature felt obliged, in response to certain CJEU…

In 2019, the EU’s Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive (CDSMD) was adopted. This included the highly controversial Articles 15 and 17 on, respectively, the new press publishers’ right (PPR) and the new copyright liability scheme for “online content-sharing services providers” (OCSSPs). In a report published in September 2022, I undertook research into the…

Much has been said about the press publishers’ right, introduced by Article 15 of the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (CDSM). Aimed at ensuring remuneration for publishers when their publications are reused online by news aggregators, Article 15 grants press publishers the right of reproduction and the right of making available for…

Last week, the European Commission sent reasoned opinions to 13 Member States (Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Denmark, Greece, France, Latvia, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Slovakia, Finland and Sweden) for failure to notify the Commission of transposition measures on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market (Directive (EU) 2019/790) (CDSM Directive) The CDSM Directive was published…

This two-part blog post offers both an evaluation of the current regulatory challenge faced by MS implementing Art. 17 CDSMD after the CJEU’s ruling in Case C-401/19, as well as a fresh perspective on tackling the implementation challenge ahead. Part I of this post provides context to our analysis, explaining the need for a more…