Placing a copyright-infringing armchair in a hotel lobby does not qualify as “distribution”, but displaying a photo of it on the hotel’s website does qualify as “making available” under copyright law.  This is the outcome of a recent Austrian Supreme Court judgment, notable for its reversal of the decision of that same court in the…

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…

On June 24, 2014, the Austrian Supreme Court ruled that the Austrian internet service provider UPC Telekabel Wien GmbH must block access to copyright infringing websites.  The Supreme Court noted that, in accordance with the ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union in Case C-314/12, such an injunction leaves its addressee to determine the specific measures to…

“This indicates the main danger of the ruling, that of fragmentation. This was foreseen by the Austrian referring court, which suggested that guidelines assessing the proportionality of blocking measures be laid down by the CJEU – that would have been welcome indeed! That absence is certainly the biggest deficiency of the ruling.” Last Thursday, the…

On 9 February 2012, the Court of Justice of the European Union issued its judgment in the case Martin Luksan v. Petrus van der Let (Case C-277/10) opposing a film director to a film producer on the exploitation rights of the film “Fotos von der Front”. The case was brought by the Wien Handelgericht (Commercial…

By Mireille van Eechoud, Institute for Information Law (IViR) Of the many questions addressed by the Court in its Painer judgment (Case C-145/10) the most impact will probably be on the construction of an EU wide originality criterion for copyright works. Infopaq, BSA and Murphy went before, seemingly extending the originality standard implicit in the…

On 6 September 2011, General Advocate Verica Trstenjak released her Opinion on case C-277/10 (the original German version of the Opinion is available here, other language versions here). The case deals a.o. with the controversial cessio legis provision of the Austrian Urheberrechtsgesetz (Copyright Act – UrhG). According to this provision included in Art. 38(1) UrhG,…

The use of a photograph of a politician with a child, in combination with a satirical text, in a self-advertisement of a news magazine, is not covered by the freedom of satire when the satire does not concern daily political events but is merely commercially self-serving. Furthermore, the implication of a political relationship between the…

The variation of the Austrian National Anthem by setting it to a modernised “rock-version” of the classic tune and by changing the line “You are home to great sons” to “You are home to great sons and daughters” for use in an information campaign by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Education, Arts and Culture, does…

According to the Austrian Supreme Court, the EU Copyright Directive 2001/29/EC harmonises the right of communication to the public, assuming a consistent European term of publicity. The right of communication to the public is characterised by an element of distance. Therefore, the distribution by a hotel of a broadcast via TV to the TV-sets situated…