“According to the current formulation of the draft law, material quoted by humans for commentary and analysis, as opposed to that automatically selected by a computer, may be copied freely.” The link wars have once again broken out in Europe. In August, the German cabinet gave its backing to a draft law allowing news publishers…

On 13 September 2012, three months after the first ruling in a case opposing the French TV channel, TF1, to YouTube, the Paris Court of First Instance (Tribunal de Grande Instance) issued a second judgment in a case opposing the same TV channel to Dailymotion. The facts of the two cases are quite similar but…

‘According to the Supreme Court, through its service of Google Suggest, Google had not infringed any copyright but had provided the means to infringe copyright.’ In 2010 Google was sued by the French recording industry trade association (SNEP) for copyright and neighbouring right infringements via its service Google Suggest. The Court of First Instance and…

Lower courts have shifted from a notice and take down rule (provided by the e-commerce Directive and the LCEN) to a notice and stay down rule (created by the judges). This interpretation was confirmed in 2011 by the Paris Court of Appeal. However, on 12 July 2012, the Court of Cassation put an end to…

“No obligation of monitoring subsequent publications is inscribed in the law; however French Courts have a tendency to impose such an obligation on hosting providers shifting from a notice and take down rule to a notice and stay down rule.” On 29 May 2012, the Paris Court of First Instance (Tribunal de Grande Instance) issued…

On 5 April 2012, the French Court of Cassation stayed of proceedings in a copyright infringement case opposing a French songwriter to an Austrian CD manufacturer and referred preliminary questions to the CJEU on the interpretation of Article 5 (3) of Regulation 44/2001 (on jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments in civil and…

Without much noise, France recently adopted Act Nr. 2012-287 of 1st March 2012 relating to the digital exploitation of unavailable books of the 20th century. Contrary to past initiatives from the French lawmaker, the Act does not relate to orphan works, but rather to out-of-commerce works. Or, more precisely: books. According to the explanatory memorandum…

In this period of French presidential campaign, the HADOPI law has become a popular and recurrent topic. Most of the candidates have expressed an opinion (more or less constant) on the future of the law (whether to amend it, replace it, abrogate it or keep it as it is). This blog is certainly not the…

A new proposal of law on the digital exploitation of (commercially) unavailable books of the 20th Century (proposition de loi relative à l’exploitation numérique des livres indisponibles du XX° siècle) has been introduced quasi-simultaneously in the Senate and in the National Assembly. According to the preamble of the proposal, about 500 000 books published during…

By Prof. Valérie-Laure Benabou, Université de Versailles (St-Quentin). France is currently modifying, in emergency, its legislation on private copying levy and more generally on private copying after the ECJ decisions Padawan and ThuisKopie. The reason for this urgency is twofold: substantial and procedural. The French Council of State (Conseil d’Etat) has held in a decision…