“This finding could have been considered predictable, if it wasn’t for  a special provision in the Greek Constitution that safeguards participation in the information society.”

Is obliging ISPs to cut off internet access to specific copyright infringing websites compatible with the Greek Constitution? That is one of the main questions that were answered by the ruling of the District Court of Athens of May 16th, 2012.

Even if it is just a response in a demand for injunctions, this decision is important for two reasons. First, it places Greek jurisdiction among other jurisdictions that decided to impose specific technological measures on  a website that hosts or offers copyright infrin [...]

The French Supreme Court (“Cour de Cassation”) has upheld, in a ruling of 25 September 2012, a judgment of the Court of Appeal of Paris condemning Radioblog and its managing directors to the payment of damages amounting to over €1 million, in addition to a suspended prison sentence of nine months and a €10,000 fine.

The case is interesting for two reasons: the gigantic amount of damages and the application, for the first time, of new provisions of the French Intellectual Property Code condemning the provision of software applications intended to be used for infringing copyright.

The facts are the following: the website Radioblog provided a software called ‘RadioBlogClub’ to Internet user [...]

“A generalised principle of the “targeted” country might well become a recognised point of attachment in copyright conflicts of laws, at least in cases where such target jurisdictions can clearly be identified.”

The distribution of industrial products protected by copyright law can amount to a criminal offence as a violation of the distribution right. In CJEU, 21 June 2012, case C 5/11 (Donner), the CJEU clarified the interface between European law and national criminal sanctions in case such products are protected in the country of export but not in the originating country. The CJEU took the view that European legislation does not stand in the way of applying criminal law provisions c [...]

A greatest hits album by Spanish pop star Luz Casal is the subject of the first case to be brought before the Intellectual Property Commission, the body created by the so-called Sinde anti-downloading law, aimed at combating copyright violations on the internet.

AGEDI, the collecting society that represents Spain’s phonographic producers, has filed a complaint against the Swiss owner of the website uploaded.to for offering allegedly unauthorized downloads of Casal’s 15-track collection Un ramo de rosas (A bouquet of roses). The commission has also issued a notification to the administrator of the Spanish website bajui.com, Juan José Coronel, for offering a link to the content.

AGEDI arg [...]

German Court of First instance rules that YouTube is only liable for secondary liability for user’s infringing uploads, but must prevent future infringements of identified works by screening of and implementing a word filter for new uploads.

In this test run case the German composers and lyricists collecting society GEMA claimed that 12 songs of its repertoire were made accessible via YouTube without permission and that YouTube LLC was primarily liable for copyright infringement. YouTube’s reaction to this had been to cancel any further negotiations with GEMA about payments for GEMA repertoire content being uploaded to YouTube. Also, YouTube had pre-emptively blocked numerous videos that pot [...]

The Dutch Court of Appeal in Leeuwarden has ruled in favor of an online market platform with regard to its liability for intellectual property infringements and the burden of policing for unlawful use of its platform. The case between Stokke, the producer of the Tripp Trapp highchair, and Marktplaats, an eBay subsidiary and the most popular Dutch online market, is a long-running intermediary liability classic in the Netherlands, with earlier District Court rulings in 2006 and 2007.

Using recent judgments about intermediary liability of the ECJ, the Court rejects a long variety of arguments why the intermediary should not be considered passive enough to be considered a hosting provider (Artic [...]

On 10 May, the District Court of The Hague extended an earlier ruling with regard to two access providers to block The Pirate Bay to several major Dutch access providers.  The providers lament the ruling and consider appealing it, but soon more than 90% of the Dutch market blocks the infamous website. On the same day, the Dutch chapter of The Pirate Party was ordered to cancel its open proxy service to The Pirate Bay and to remove referrals to other proxies from its website. Finally game over for The Pirate Bay?

At first glance, and thus according to all hastily drafted media reports, the 10 May ruling against the major providers(Dutch) follows the reasoning of the 11 January ruling  (Dutc [...]

UK: High Court Chancery Division, 26 March 2012,  Golden Eye (International) Ltd v Telefonica UK Ltd.

Copyright owners (‘owners of the copyrights in pornographic films’) brought a claim for Norwich Pharmacal relief (“If through no fault of his own a person gets mixed up in the tortious acts of others so as to facilitate their wrong-doing he may incur no personal liability but he comes under a duty to assist the person who has been wronged by giving him full information and disclosing the identity of the wrongdoers”) against an internet service provider due to suspicions of peer-to-peer file sharing of their materials by internet users. The object of the claim is to obtain disclosure of [...]

By Axel Arnbak, IViR. Last week, a Dutch district court ruled that two internet access providers, Ziggo & XS4ALL, have to block customers’ access to the IP-addresses and (sub)domains of The Pirate Bay. The providers will appeal the ruling of the District Court of The Hague. Amidst global PR-hurricanes on the legality of website blocking, sparked by several court cases and American legislative initiatives, now seems perfect time to put the Dutch blocking case into perspective.

Essentially, the 11 January 2012 case BREIN v. Ziggo/XS4ALL (Dutch) isn’t about copyright, but about enforcement. BREIN (Dutch for ‘Brain’), a foundation protecting the interests of the Dutch copyright industry, [...]

This sentence summarizes quite well the decision of the Antwerp Court of Appeal of 26 September 2011 which it is abstracted from.

The Belgian Anti-piracy Federation filed a cease and desist action against Telenet and Belgacom, two Belgian ISPs, in order to make them block The Pirate Bay’s websites in their respective networks.

In first instance, the President of the Commercial Court of Antwerp rejected the claims as he deemed that the requested measures were disproportionate.

The Court of Appeal overruled the decision and granted an injunction on basis of art. 87, §1, al.2 of the Belgian Copyright Act, which transposes art. 8, §3 of the InfoSoc Directive 2001/29/CE, and which provides th [...]