On March 9th, 2021 the CJEU delivered its eagerly awaited decision on the VG Kunst case (C‑392/19). The facts of the case are interesting, since the question of the lawfulness of frame linking and of inline linking was not directly raised. Instead, it appears indirectly in the context of the assessment of licence terms requiring…

On the 16 July 2020, the Advocate General (AG) Saugmandsgaard Øe delivered his much-awaited opinion on the case of Peterson v YouTube (joined cases C-682/18 and 683/18), referred to the CJEU by the German Federal Court of Justice. Having explicitly precluded the consideration of provisions of the Copyright in the Digital Single Market (DSM) Directive…

In the last few months of 2020 there have been further developments in Italy with regards to private and administrative enforcement against illicit distribution of copyright content over the Internet. 1. New Italian case law against Content Delivery Network (CDN) operators In a 2019 post on this Blog (here), we analysed the impact of illegal…

The first part of this blogpost analysed the main theoretical foundations of the AG’s Opinion in the VG Bild-Kunst case (C‑392/19). The second part focuses on the application of this theoretical background to frame links and inline (automatic) links. As will be shown, the AG has proposed a methodological model of distinction between hyperlinks on…

On September 10, 2020 the Advocate General (AG) Maciej Szpunar delivered his Opinion on the case of VG Bild-Kunst v Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitzanother (C‑392/19), a further case concerning the legality of linking. The assessment of linking from an EU copyright law perspective appears to be a labyrinthine legal exercise, since, following the seminal Svensson (C‑466/12)…

Part 1 of this blog post introduced the claim by rightsholders and some other commentators that Article 17 of the EU Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (DSM Directive) is a mere clarification of existing Court of Justice case-law on communication to the public and intermediary liability. The second part of this blog…

On 9 July 2020, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) delivered its judgment in Case C-264/19 Constantin Film Verleih v YouTube and Google Inc. Providing clarification on the scope of the copyright holder’s right to information, the CJEU decided that the notion of “address”, as set in Directive 2004/48/EC (Enforcement Directive), does…

Part 1 of this post illustrated the criteria differentiating Article 17 of the EU Directive on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market (“DSMCD”) from Article 3 InfoSoc Directive and came to the conclusion that the relationship between the two provisions cannot be explained by a sui generis right, which follows its own…

Part 2 of this publication will be published on the Kluwer Copyright Blog shortly.  “… [T]his Directive shall leave intact and shall in no way affect existing rules laid down in the directives currently in force in this area, in particular Directives … 2001/29/EC.”. Art. 1(2) of the EU Directive on copyright and related rights…

ORF/Facebook – First follow up ruling after CJEU C18/18 – Glawischnig/Facebook First, a little bit of history. Back in 2016, a Facebook post containing an article with a photograph of the former Austrian politician Eva Glawischnig gave rise to a landmark decision against Facebook. Alongside a photo of Ms Glawischnig, she was referred to as,…