The appeal court held that the diffusion of broadcast works as ambient music, by means of playing radio broadcasts through several loudspeakers in a fruit shop open to the public, was a mere reception and not a reuse of the broadcast works and therefore it did not require the authorisation of the copyright holders. A…
The Supreme Court validated the method used by the French collecting society Sacem to determine how the proceeds relating to the exploitation of musical works in clubs and discotheques should be redistributed to the rightholders. A full summary of this case has been published on Kluwer IP Law
A federal district court did not err in ruling that Amazon.com and its founder, Jeff Bezos, did not exceed the scope of their publishing license by failing to pay the full amount of royalties that were allegedly owed to a self-published author, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Philadelphia has ruled (Carlin v. Bezos, May…
Four children of the deceased gospel music composer and publisher Albert Brumley successfully terminated Brumley’s assignment of the copyright to the song “I’ll Fly Away” to their brother, Robert, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Cincinnati has held (Brumley v. Albert E. Brumley & Sons, Inc., May 16, 2016, Sutton, J.). The Copyright Act allowed…
1. Introduction The internet has been a challenge for copyright since its advent two decades ago. Many questions have now been answered. It is surprising, however, that one of the main internet technologies, hyperlinking, is still the subject of hotly debated issues under EU copyright law, which the CJEU has yet to answer. 2. Linking…
Could copyright put an end to the challenges the news industry faces while it tries to manage its position on the Internet? This question lay at the heart of the conference “Copyright, Related Rights and the news”, organised by the Institute for Information Law in collaboration with CIPIL on April 23, 2016. Threats faced by…
The saga over the legality of the Google Books project finally came to an end on April 18, 2016, when the Supreme Court of the US refused to intervene in the case over alleged copyright infringement for scanning millions of books and making them searchable online. This was a final blow to authors’ representatives who…
The court held that the operators of a website and mobile applications had infringed the claimants’ copyright in TV broadcasts and films of cricket matches by allowing users to upload, view and share short clips of cricket match broadcasts. Fair dealing for the purposes of reporting current events in accordance with s30(2) CDPA did not…
On 26 November 2015, the Spanish competition authority imposed a new fine on Spanish collecting societies. Two organisations were affected, the society that represents record companies (AGEDI) and the society representing music performers (AIE), who operate in their respective sectors without competition. In the opinion of the Spanish Markets and Competition Commission (CNMC), the two…
The court of appeals confirmed that there had been infringement of copyright in the claimant’s photographs, and in doing so, clarified the requirements for the protection of photos as copyright works. The court provided guidance regarding lump sum compensation as an alternative to compensation by way of direct damages. A full summary of this case…
