The right to freedom of expression is of paramount importance for a democratic society. When balanced with other fundamental rights, Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights affords Member States a wide margin of appreciation. This margin is traditionally exercised by the national legislatures. With the extensive harmonization of copyright through EU law,…
Introduction The CDSM Directive introduces exceptions or limitations (E&L) for three different purposes. These are (as already outlined here) text and data mining (Articles 3 and 4), cross-border teaching (Article 5) and the preservation of cultural heritage (Article 6). The specific E&L are flanked by a general provision that prohibits contractual derogations from these mandatory…
In its judgment of 19 December 2018 in Criminal proceedings against Imran Syed (C-572/17) the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) rules that the storage of copyright infringing items constitutes infringement of the distribution right if identical items are also held at the actual place of sale and those items are intended to…
On 12 December 2018 Advocate General (AG) Szpunar delivered his Opinion in Case C-476/17, Pelham. The case concerns the practice of sampling, i.e. the reproduction of minimal parts of a phonogram for the purposes of using it in another phonogram. As harmonized by EU law, the phonogram producer holds a related right of reproduction (Article…
The relation between freedom of expression and copyright in the EU is one of imprecision and uncertainty. In Funke Medien (Case C-469/17) the German Federal Supreme Court (BGH) asks whether fundamental rights should permit the unauthorized use of military reports in the absence of an applicable copyright exception. In his Opinion, Advocate General (AG) Szpunar…
The right of distribution is the least controversial of the three exclusive rights contained in the Information Society Directive (InfoSoc Directive). Yet, every now and then the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) is asked to re-examine its scope. With far less interpretative imagination compared with the right of communication to the public,…
