Part I of this annual post reporting on the copyright case law of the German Bundesgerichtshof covered decisions in the areas of copyright protection and exploitation rights, as well as exceptions and limitations. Part II will focus on copyright contract law and claims under copyright law.   IV.           Copyright contract law (Sections 31 et seqq….

This article continues the tradition of reporting on the copyright case law of the German Bundesgerichtshof, the highest German civil court for copyright matters (Federal Court of Justice – “BGH”). This article summarises the most important BGH copyright decisions in 2022 as well as selected lower-court case law. Readers may find it useful to consult…

Dear readers, Happy new year! Welcome to the fourth (and last) round up of EU copyright law for 2023! In this edition, we update you on what has happened in the last three months of 2024 in EU copyright law. The end of the year was busy for both the courts and the policy makers….

The UK High Court has held that Lidl’s rights in the Lidl logo were infringed by Tesco’s Clubcard Price(s) signs ([2023] EWHC 873 (Ch)). Specifically, the court made the following findings. Trade mark infringement – Lidl’s trade mark for the Lidl logo was infringed by Tesco’s Clubcard Price(s) signs, which took unfair advantage of Lidl’s…

The posting of the privately-developed standards constitutes fair use—at least when done for non-profit purposes. A public interest organization that made available to the public a collection of technical standards incorporated by reference in federal regulations engaged in a fair use of those standards and therefore did not infringe on the exclusive rights of the…

The US class action against Google Bard (J.L. v. Alphabet Inc, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, No. 3:23-cv-03440) In a recent post we analysed a class action filed in the US against Open AI for unauthorized use of copyright works for training of generative AI tools such as ChatGPT (here) (“Generative…

Welcome to the third trimester of the 2023 round up of EU copyright law! In this edition, we update you on what has happened between July and September 2023 in EU copyright law. The autumn has started with full speed – the courts and the policy makes have been very active. This round up series…

In June 2023 the U.S. Copyright Office celebrated the one-year anniversary of operations of the Copyright Claims Board (“CCB”), a novel new small claims court housed within the agency with a budget request for $2.2 million in ongoing yearly costs. Though not entirely unique (e.g., the UK’s IP Enterprise court has been described as filling…

Perhaps it comes as no surprise that a copyright dispute regarding a fire-breathing–sneezing dragon would get so heated. The case of Evans v John Lewis Plc & Anor [2023] EWHC 766 (IPEC) is a copyright infringement claim in which the IPEC (a specialist IP court in the UK) was asked to decide whether John Lewis’s…

In a case between Google and the creator of the font used by the French newspaper Le Monde, the Paris Court of First Instance (‘Tribunal Judiciaire’) has handed down a judgment in which it ruled that the font created for the newspaper is original and thus protected by copyright, even though it found that Google’s…