Echos from the Dutch legal and scientific communities indicate that opinions widely diverge on the topic of the imperative character of proposed article 25 fa) of the Dutch Copyright Act in situations bearing an international dimension. As discussed in my previous blogpost, this new provision would give authors of short works of science for which…
Benjamin Gibert’s report for the Lisbon Council entitled ‘The 2015 Intellectual Property and Economic Growth Index: Measuring the Impact of Exceptions and Limitations in Copyright on Growth, Jobs and Prosperity’ raised eyebrows in The Netherlands. Not that the conclusion that ‘countries that employ a broadly “flexible” regime of exceptions in copyright also see higher rates…
This article was originally published on the Media Institute website – see here. It is reproduced here with the kind permission of the author. In a previous column for the Media Institute (Feb. 17, 2015), I urged that any copyright reform legislation that emerges from the preparations for “the next great copyright act” should ensure both…
The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), the main public funding agency in the country, has been enforcing already for a few years an Open Access (OA) policy for the dissemination of the results of the research that it finances (both publications and data). The NWO does not mandate a specific form of OA: Green…
On 1 May 2015 a new, second, ‘anti-piracy’ law [1] will take effect in Russia. This law amends the provisions on preliminary interim blocking injunctions for intermediaries introduced by the first anti-piracy law, which took effect on 1 August 2013. In the opinion of this blogger, the new law, like its predecessor, will barely affect…
A brief outline of the copyright protection granted for architectural designs In Article 2/1, the Berne Convention counts architectural works, together with plans, sketches and three-dimensional works relative to architecture, as copyrightable subject matter. Turkish law treats architectural creations in two different categories: as “literary works” and “works of fine art”. Accordingly, under Law No…
The latest large-scale reform of the Spanish Copyright Act was published on 5 November 2014. The key aspects of the reform are discussed here. The bulk of the opposition to the reform contends that two provisions of the Act, namely, the new regulation for private copying and the imposition of a “one-stop shop” system, breach the…
On the 1st October 2014, the Copyright and Rights in Performances (Extended Collective Licensing) Regulations 2014 came into force in the UK.1 Licensing bodies and collecting societies already operate within the UK, providing rights management and licensing services for their rightsholder members across a range of sectors including publishing, art and design, music and…
“With respect to the current stunted reform, the new legislation once again touches on past issues that were never properly resolved, and I am afraid that this is still the case now. The first is the zombie issue of private copying and the second salient point of the reform is piracy. Other reforms regard the…
“With the decision in case C-114/12, the Court is now placing emphasis on the hypotheticals by holding that the mere possibility of an international agreement impacting the EU acquis is enough to rule out Member States’ intervention, making the EU exclusively competent to conclude this type of agreement.” On 4 September 2014, the Court of…
