On 3 June 2021, the CJEU handed down its judgment in CV-Online Latvia v Melons (with Ilešič as a reporting judge), a case involving Melons’ infringement of CV-Online Latvia’s database of job advertisements arguably protected by the sui generis right. The facts of the case are expertly described by Tatiana Synodinou in her comment on the…
On 14 January 2021, Advocate General (AG) Szpunar delivered his Opinion in Case C‑762/19, SIA ‘CV-Online Latvia’ v SIA ‘Melons’, a further case relating to the database sui generis right. The application of the sui generis right to the activity of search engines was the main question raised in this case. Specifically, a specialist search…
A new French Law provides that search engines using thumbnails will have to pay royalties via a compulsory collective management for the reproduction of photographs and images. The French Act No. 2016-925 of 7 July 2016 on freedom of creation, architecture and cultural heritage contains several provisions on copyright that modify the intellectual property Code…
In France, search engines using thumbnails are likely to infringe on copyright. On 8 April 2014, a French Senator proposed a Bill to establish compulsory collective management for the reproduction of photographs and images by search engine services. Thumbnails are reduced-size versions of photographs and images, used by search engines such as Google Images in…
“The activity of the operator of a dedicated meta search engine (…) comes close to the manufacture of a parasitical competing product.” Christmas somewhat overshadowed the publication of a particularly interesting CJEU decision: case C-202/12 (Innoweb), dealing with the legal protection of databases in relation to meta search engines. The judgment was published on 19…
