On 8 May, coinciding with the 80th anniversary of the end of WWII, Advocate General Szpunar delivered his long-awaited opinion in joined cases Mio/konektra (C-580/23 and C-795/23). The two cases were referred by the Svea Court of Appeal, Patent and Commercial Court of Appeal in Stockholm and the German Federal Court of Justice in cases…
The debate on whether works protected by copyright can be used for the training of artificial intelligence (AI) has reached India. While dozens of US District Courts are currently grappling with the question of whether AI training with protected works constitutes fair use, the UK High Court is largely grappling with jurisdictional questions, and EU…
On March 18, 2025, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit affirmed the denial of Stephen Thaler’s application to register A Recent Entrance to Paradise, a purportedly machine-authored work, holding that the Copyright Act of 1976 “requires all eligible work to be authored in the first instance by a human…
In a decision of 20 February 2025 the German Federal Supreme Court (BGH) denied copyright protection as a work of applied art for two sandal designs. The ruling clarifies the scope of protection under German and EU law for works of applied art. According to the BGH, works of applied art enjoy protection if they…
The commercial teaching kit use the artist’s works in their entirety and encouraged the students to create their own art based on them. An art center that sold “art kits” for use by children made a fair use of six of an artist’s works that it included in full in its kits because it drew…
Welcome back for the second part of the C-590/23 Pelham II hearing commentary. In part one (here), we covered the interpretation of pastiche. However, a very interesting topic arose in the Court’s pre-emptive questions, and during the oral questions: the interaction of “pastiche” with Article 17 CDSM Directive. This was not originally part of the…
On 14 January 2025, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) heard oral arguments in the much-anticipated case C-590/23 Pelham II, where the German Federal Court submitted a request for preliminary ruling on the interpretation of “pastiche”. The purpose was to ascertain whether a two-second sample from a phonogram could fall under the…
The government will have to pay the software developer only $150,000 for its infringement. The U.S. Navy will be required to pay just over $150,000 in damages for its installation of virtual reality software on nearly 500,000 computers without authorization, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has held. The court of appeals,…
Claims arise out of publication of textbooks in electronic format. Several textbook authors, purporting to represent a class, have stated a claim for breach of contract arising out of publisher McGraw Hill LLC’s unilateral decision to cease or reduce royalties for the authors’ textbooks sold in electronic form (“ebooks”), the United States Court of Appeals…
As we enter a new year, we would like to take this opportunity to pass on our best wishes for 2025 to all of our readers, as well as reflect on developments in copyright over the past year. Last year was another busy one in the copyright world, with an increasing focus on the relationship…
