The ownership of copyright in works is determined by law and may depend on the circumstances under which the work was created. In many cases the author of the work will be the first owner but, for example, some national laws provide that where such works are made by employees, the employer is the first owner of the copyright. Ownership of copyright can be transferred.
“In the absence of any claim from the phonogram producer, or its assigns, the natural or legal person who publicly, peacefully and unambiguously exploits recordings, is deemed to be the holder of the rights in the recordings as regards third parties against whom an infringement case is brought.” The French Intellectual Property Code deals with…
Estonian Supreme Court, 7 February 2012, Case No3-2-1-155-11, Herlitz PBS AG vs. Realister OÜ (plaintiff in the prededing proceeding). The Estonian Supreme Court found in its recent judgement in the Realister case that the presumption of authorship as laid down in the Sections 4(6) and 29(1) of the Estonian Copyright Act (hereinafter referred to as…
The Proposal for a Directive on certain permitted uses of orphan works, introduced in the European Parliament on 24 May 2011, has been following its merry way through the legislative meanders ever since. The debates around the text of the proposal are heating up right now, for the European Commission pushes for rapid adoption while…
Patents Court London, 19 January 2012, Hoffman v Drug Abuse Resistance Education. A charity infringed copyright in photographs by including them in its website withouth the author’s permission. The fact that the charity was under a good-faith impression that it had permission to use the photographs, as they appeared in a website that was covered…
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…
UK: Future Publishing Ltd v. Edge Interactive Media Inc., High Court Chancery Division, 13 June 2011. Copyright in logo: US companies involved in the business of computer games had infringed copyright in the logo of a computer gaming magazine (“EDGE”), by using it on letterhead, website and games. The Court found the logo sufficiently original…
On 24 May 2011, the European Commission announced a proposal for a directive on ‘certain permitted uses of orphan works’. This title perfectly conveys the scope of the proposal. Rather than adopting a generic approach to deal with the problem of orphan works, the Commission comes up with a set of measures designed for specific…
BELGIUM – In a case of SABAM (the Belgian Society of Authors, Composers and Publishers) versus a counterfeits dealer, the Belgian Supreme Courts finds that in litigations against copyright infringers, collecting societies can prove the existence of management contracts pertaining to some works by solely producing the official repertoire listing that they mandatorily have to…
By Luke McDongagh, PhD Candidate, QMIPRI The Irish Times has recently reported that the Joyce estate has, after many years of refusal, finally granted the English singer Kate Bush permission to use the famous Molly Bloom soliloquy from James Joyce’s seminal novel Ulysses as the lyrical basis for a song. The soliloquy, spoken at the…
Paintings that were abandoned and left in a loft were not subject to free utilization. The copyright in the paintings was thus not exhausted. A summary of this case will be posted on http://www.KluwerIPCases.com
