In this second post on the Swedish proposal for implementation of Article 17, I look at provisions explicitly concerning users of services. Whilst certain user safeguards are already embedded in the liability regime (Part 1), the Swedish Ministry of Justice goes the extra mile and proposes to comprehensively address user interests in the text of…

As promised in an earlier contribution, I will provide a more reasoned exploration of the Swedish proposal to Article 17 DSM Directive in view of the fact that the Ministry of Justice did not opt for the copy-paste implementation technique. In this first post, out of two, I will address the proposed liability regime. The…

Article 17 has been a (the) leading buzzword of the copyright reforms of the European Union in recent years (at least half a decade already). The transposition deadline has now passed. As of June 6, 2021, however, only a handful of Member States have implemented Directive 2019/790/EU (Copyright in the Digital Single Market; hereinafter CDSMD)….

By now everyone in the world must have heard of Sweden, especially European copyright lawyers. This post concerns two recent preliminary rulings from the CJEU, both at the request of Swedish courts. As both involved the communication to the public right, and both led the CJEU to pronounce the infrequently heard incantation that Article 3…

Blocking injunctions against internet service providers (ISPs) remain one of the most interesting and litigated issues of contemporary copyright law. Though the concept of blocking injunctions per se is firmly established on the basis of CJEU case law (C‑324/09 L’Oréal, C-70/10 Scarlet Extended, C-360/10 Sabam and the seminal C-314/12 UPC Telekabel), blocking injunction jurisprudence in…

In its judgment of 19 December 2018 in Criminal proceedings against Imran Syed (C-572/17) the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) rules that the storage of copyright infringing items constitutes infringement of the distribution right if identical items are also held at the actual place of sale and those items are intended to…

New Swedish practice on how reasonable compensation for copyright infringement should be calculated was presented in a judgment of the Swedish Supreme Court concerning Dreamfilm’s sharing of a film from Svensk Filmindustri (SF). The verdict was given on 21 January 2019 (case no. B 1540-18). In the grounds of the judgment, there are new and…

While avid readers of IP blogs have recently learned about UK courts issuing flexible and powerful live blocking orders against illegal streaming websites (here), Italian courts imposing dynamic blocking orders elegantly skirting the outer limits of the general monitoring prohibition (here), and German courts handing down blocking injunctions based on something as German-sounding as Störerhaftung,…

In a decision of 13 November 2018 concerning joined cases T 5909-17 and T 891-18 the Swedish Supreme Court, Högsta domstolen (HD), has decided to ask the CJEU whether the catalogue of acts falling within the concept of communication to the public includes the rental of cars with a standard-fitted radio integrated into the central…

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…