Website blocking injunction cases are complicated in Sweden because the Copyright Act requires contributory liability of the ISP, or in the case of interim injunctions – probable cause, for an injunction to be issued. While the reduced evidentiary burden for interim injunctions does not completely absolve a court from scrutinising the evidence, the legal context…

Since 1 April 2018, the Portability Regulation has prohibited geo-blocking of online content within the European Union under certain requirements. The regulation guarantees the unrestricted access to (paid) subscribed online content of all European citizens, regardless of where they are present in EU territory. The presence must be “temporary”. Providers of fee-based online content are…

This article will be forthcoming in the March 2019 issue of Communications of the ACM, a computing professionals journal. The editors of Communications of the ACM have given permission for it to be pre-published for the Kluwer Copyright Blog.         Should European press publishers be granted a new intellectual property (IP) right…

As discussed in Part I of this blogpost, the CJEU in Renckhoff was called, once again, to analyse the application of copyright in relation to the use of copyright-protected works on the Internet. The Renckhoff judgment is, therefore, another addition to the complex European copyright case law construction. To date, the often tailor-made jurisprudential solutions…

The delimitation of the proper boundaries of lawful use of copyright-protected works on the Internet has always been puzzling for courts, which in some instances have creatively interpreted the copyright acquis in order to take account of the particularities of the digital ecosystem. In this context, the CJEU in Usedsoft (C-128/11) adopted for the first…

In the run-up to the Plenary vote of the European Parliament in June and again currently, some academics and other voices have criticized the JURI Committee Report especially on Article 13 of the Proposal for a Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market. Among others, they purport that these proposals would contravene the acquis…

1. Introduction In September 2016, the European Commission published its proposal for a new Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market, including its controversial draft Article 13. The main driver behind this provision is what has become known as the ‘value gap’, i.e. the alleged mismatch between the value that online sharing platforms extract…

Forthcoming in the November 2018 issue of Communications of the ACM, a computing professionals journal, is a column entitled “Legally Speaking: The EU’s Controversial Digital Single Market Directive” by Professor Pamela Samuelson, Berkeley Law School. The editors of Communications of the ACM have given permission for this column to be pre-published for the Kluwer Copyright…

Forthcoming in the November 2018 issue of Communications of the ACM, a computing professionals journal, is a column entitled “Legally Speaking: The EU’s Controversial Digital Single Market Directive” by Professor Pamela Samuelson, Berkeley Law School. The editors of Communications of the ACM have given permission for this column to be pre-published for the Kluwer Copyright…

It is difficult to find an article on any topic in the field of intellectual property (IP) that does not call for reform. Many legislative efforts are afoot in the EU to “update” IP norms, including a proposed Directive on copyright in the Digital Single Market. The same is happening elsewhere but most of those…