Following a referendum on 23 June 2016, 51.9% of UK voters said “yes” to Brexit. British Prime Minister Theresa May revealed earlier this month that Article 50 TEU will be triggered by March 2017, marking the beginning of the formal withdrawal process. It is hard to predict the impact of Brexit on the current copyright…

The federal district court in New York City correctly dismissed Joel R. McDonald’s amended complaint against musicians and record producers Kanye West, Shawn Carter (“Jay Z”), and others because the defendants’ song “Made in America” was not substantially similar to McDonald’s song with the same title, either in terms of lyrical content or musical structure,…

Lawful acquirers of computer programs cannot resell back-up copies of the programs. This is according to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in case C-166/15 (Ranks/Vasiļevičs v. Finanšu un ekonomisko noziegumu izmeklēšanas prokoratūra/Microsoft Corp). The circumstances of the case were that two persons sold, on an online marketplace, used copies of computer…

A new French Law provides that search engines using thumbnails will have to pay royalties via a compulsory collective management for the reproduction of photographs and images. The French Act No. 2016-925 of 7 July 2016 on freedom of creation, architecture and cultural heritage contains several provisions on copyright that modify the intellectual property Code…

As has by now been extensively reported, on 14th September the European Commission released its new copyright reform package. Prominent within this is its proposal for a new Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market. The proposal contains an array of controversial offerings, but from the perspective of this intermediary liability blogger, the most…

What is an appropriate royalty for a broadcaster to pay for the right to include music in its broadcasts?  This is a question the UK Copyright Tribunal considered recently in a rather dry but comprehensive decision. The decision was under Section 126 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (“CDPA”) relating to a dispute…

A federal district court improperly dismissed an enforcement action that a copyright holder had brought against an art editor under California’s Uniform Foreign Court Monetary Judgment Recognition Act, the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco has ruled. The copyright holder sought recognition of a French judgment of infringement under the Uniform Recognition Act. Because…

The last two weeks were truly hard for the future of the digital economy in Europe. First, the European Commission officially declared its regulatory capture. Then the CJEU provided us with a great set of hyperlinking clarifications for their daily use. Now it is completely clear, who, when, and how one can link to avoid…

On 8 September 2016, AG Wahl presented his Opinion regarding the nature of the competence of the EU to conclude the Marrakesh Treaty (Opinion procedure 3/15). In the AG’s view, [*spoiler alert*] the EU is exclusively competent on this matter – a conclusion that much delighted this blogger and that she had already ventured in…